ppose Frankie Taliaferro would get over it much more easily than Louise
could."

"Charlie," I said slowly, "you don't mean to be, but you are too conceited
to live. I wonder that you haven't died of conceit before this."

Charlie's blond face flushed and he looked deeply offended.

"Conceited!" he burst out. "Why, Ruth, there isn't a fellow going who has
a worse opinion of himself than I have. I don't see what either of those
girls sees in me to love, I tell you. I am not proud of it. I wish to
Heaven they didn't love me. _I_ haven't made them."

"'Haven't made them'! Yes, you have. You are just the kind of man who
does. You say pretty things even to old women, and bring them shawls and
put footstools under their feet with the air of a lover. And if you only
hand a woman an ice you look unutterable things. You have a dozen girls at
a time in that indefinite state when three words to any one of them would
engage you to her, and she would think you had deliberately led up to it;
whereas all the past had been idle admiration on your part, and it was a
rose in her hair or a moment in the conservatory that upset you, and there
you are. Oh, these girls, these girls, who believe every time a man at a
ball says he loves them that he means it! Why can't you be satisfied to
have some of them friends, and not all sweethearts?"

"It can't be done. I've tried and I know. Sallie tried it and it married
her off--a thing not one of her flirtations could have accomplished. This
is the way it goes. You arrange with a girl not to have any nonsense, but
just to be good friends. You take her to the theatre, drive with her,
dance with her. Soon her chaperon begins to eye you over. Fellows at the
club drop a remark now and then. You explain that you are only friends,
and they wink at you and you feel foolish. Next time they see you with
her, they look knowing, and you see, to your horror, that the girl is
blushing. Evidently she is under fire too. Still, you keep it up. She
makes a better comrade than any of the men. You feel that you are out of
mischief when you are with her. She keeps you alert. You never are bored,
but really you are not as fond of her as you were of your college chum
even. She treats you a trifle, just a trifle, differently from all the
other men. This goes to your head. You begin to make a little difference
yourself. You take her hand when you say good-night, just as you would one
of the men. But it is not the same. T