and vocal music; and has some down-and-out old hen read with
her. I believe her ambition is to take the regular Harvard
course as nearly as possible. Some nerve! What?

"Well, that's how her mornings go; and now I've given you, I
think, a fair schedule of the life she leads. That fellow
Dane hangs about a lot. So do Hargrave and Faithorn and young
Allys and Arthur Ensart. And so do I, Clive; and a lot of
others. Why, I don't know. I don't suppose we'd marry her;
and yet it would not surprise me if any one of us asked her.
My suspicions are that the majority of the men who go there
_have_ asked her. We're a fine lot, we men. So damn
fastidious. And then we go to sentimental pieces when we at
last get it into our bone-heads that there is no other way
that leads to Athalie except by marrying her. And we ask her.
And _then_ we get turned down!

"Clive, _that_ girl ought to be easy. To look at her you'd
say she was made of wax, easily moulded, and fashioned to be
loved, and to love. But, by God, I don't think it's in her to
love.... For, if it were--good night. She'd have raised the
devil in this world long ago. And some of us would have done
murder before now.

"If I had not dined so copiously and so rashly I wouldn't
write you all this. I'd write a page or two and lie to you,
politely. And so I'll say this: I really do believe that it
is in Athalie to love some man. And I believe, if she did
love him, she'd love him in any way he asked her. He hasn't
come along yet; that's all. But Oh! how he will be hated when
he does--unless he is the marrying kind. And anyway he'll be
hated. Because, however he does it, he'll get one of the
loveliest girls this town ever set eyes on. And the rest of
us will realise it then, and there will be some
teeth-gnashing, believe me!--and some squirming. Because the
worm that never dieth will continue to chew us one and all,
and never, never let us forget that the girl no man of our
sort could really condescend to marry, had been asked by
every one of us in turn to marry him; and had declined.

"And I'll add this for my own satisfaction: the man who gets
her, and doesn't marry her, will ultimately experience a
biting from that same worm which will make our lacerations
resemble the agreeable tickling of a feather.

"We're a rotten lot of cowards. And what hypocrites we