uction.

I did not meet Jerry Weston again for nearly a year; but that did not
mean that I did not hear of him. I wonder if Helen ever noticed how
often I used to get her to talk of her home and her family life; and
how interested I was in her gallery of portraits on the mantel--there
were two fine ones of her brother there.

Helen was very fond of her brother. I soon found that she loved to
talk about him--if she had a good listener. Needless to say she had a
very good one in me.

Jerry was an artist, it seemed. He was twenty-eight years old, and
already he had won no small distinction. Prizes, medals, honorable
mention, and a special course abroad--all these Helen told me about.
She told me, too, about the wonderful success he had just had with the
portrait of a certain New York society woman. She said that it was
just going to "make" Jerry; that he could have anything he wanted
now--anything. Then she told me how popular he always was with
everybody. Helen was not only very fond of her brother, but very proud
of him. That was plain to be seen. In her opinion, evidently, there
was none to be compared with him.

And apparently, in my own mind, I agreed with her--there was none to
be compared with him. At all events, all the other boys that used
to call and bring me candy and send me flowers at about this time
suffered woefully in comparison with him! I remember that. So tame
they were--so crude and young and unpolished!

I saw Jerry myself during the Easter vacation of my second year in
college. Helen invited me to go home with her, and Mother wrote that I
might go. Helen had been home with me for the Christmas vacation,
and Mother and Father liked her very much. There was no hesitation,
therefore, in their consent that I should visit Helen at Easter-time.
So I went.

Helen lived in New York. Their home was a Fifth-Avenue mansion with
nine servants, four automobiles, and two chauffeurs. Naturally such
a scale of living was entirely new to me, and correspondingly
fascinating. From the elaborately uniformed footman that opened the
door for me to the awesome French maid who "did" my hair, I adored
them all, and moved as in a dream of enchantment. Then came Jerry home
from a week-end's trip--and I forgot everything else.

I knew from the minute his eyes looked into mine that whatever I had
been before, I was now certainly no mere "Oh, some friend of Helen's."
I was (so his eyes said) "a deucedly pretty girl, and o