are very young,' he began.

'Too young to be trusted?'

'No, I did not say _that_.'

'But your look said it.'

'My look then mistranslated my feeling.'

'What did you feel?'

'Surprise, and interest, and gratitude.'

She tossed her head impatiently.

'Do you think I can't understand?' she asked, in her impetuous way--her
imperial way with most others, but only an impetuous way with him. For
most others with whom she was familiar she was able to control and be
familiar with, but she could only be impetuous with the Dictator.
Indeed, it was the high tide of her emotion which carried her away so
far as to fling her in mere impetuousness against him.

The Dictator was silent for a moment, and then he said: 'You don't seem
much more than a child to me.'

'Oh! Why? Do you not know?--I am twenty-three!'

'I am twenty-three,' the Dictator murmured, looking at her with a kindly
and half-melancholy interest. 'You are twenty-three! Well, there it
is--do you not see, Miss Langley?'

'There what is?'

'There is all the difference. To be twenty-three seems to you to make
you quite a grown-up person.'

'What else should it make me? I have been of age for two years. What am
I but a grown-up person?'

'Not in my sense,' he said placidly. 'You see, I have gone through so
much, and lived so many lives, that I begin to feel quite like an old
man already. Why, I might have had a daughter as old as you.'

'Oh, stuff!' the audacious young woman interposed.

'Stuff? How do you know?'

'As if I hadn't read lives of you in all the papers and magazines and I
don't know what. I can tell you your birthday if you wish, and the year
of your birth. You are quite young--in my eyes.'

'You are kind to me,' he said, gravely, 'and I am quite sure that I look
at my very best in your eyes.'

'You do indeed,' she said fervently, gratefully.

'Still, that does not prevent me from being twenty years older than
you.'

'All right; but would you refuse to talk frankly and sensibly about
yourself?--sensibly, I mean, as one talks to a friend and not as one
talks to a child. Would you refuse to talk in that way to a young man
merely because you were twenty years older than he?'

'I am not much of a talker,' he said, 'and I very much doubt if I should
talk to a young man at all about my projects, unless, of course, to my
friend Hamilton.'

Helena turned half away disappointed. It was of no use, then--she was
not his friend. He did no