rker by birth; and she told him she pitied him, when he said he
had never been West. She professed herself perfectly sick of New York,
and urged him to go to Moffitt if he wanted to see a real live town. He
wondered if it would do to put her into literature just as she was, with
all her slang and brag, but he decided that he would have to subdue her
a great deal: he did not see how he could reconcile the facts of her
conversation with the facts of her appearance: her beauty, her splendor
of dress, her apparent right to be where she was. These things
perplexed him; he was afraid the great American novel, if true, must be
incredible. Mela said he ought to hear her sister go on about New York
when they first came; but she reckoned that Christine was getting so
she could put up with it a little better, now. She looked significantly
across the room to the place where Christine was now talking with
Beaton; and the student of human nature asked, Was she here? and, Would
she introduce him? Mela said she would, the first chance she got; and
she added, They would be much pleased to have him call. She felt herself
to be having a beautiful time, and she got directly upon such intimate
terms with the student of human nature that she laughed with him about
some peculiarities of his, such as his going so far about to ask things
he wanted to know from her; she said she never did believe in beating
about the bush much. She had noticed the same thing in Miss Vance when
she came to call that day; and when the young man owned that he came
rather a good deal to Mrs. Horn's house, she asked him, Well, what sort
of a girl was Miss Vance, anyway, and where did he suppose she had met
her brother? The student of human nature could not say as to this, and
as to Miss Vance he judged it safest to treat of the non-society side of
her character, her activity in charity, her special devotion to the work
among the poor on the East Side, which she personally engaged in.

"Oh, that's where Conrad goes, too!" Mela interrupted. "I'll bet
anything that's where she met him. I wisht I could tell Christine! But I
suppose she would want to kill me, if I was to speak to her now."

The student of human nature said, politely, "Oh, shall I take you to
her?"

Mela answered, "I guess you better not!" with a laugh so significant
that he could not help his inferences concerning both Christine's
absorption in the person she was talking with and the habitual violence
o