work is real, and you have a natural art
which I just seem to see. What has been the matter with me, anyhow?"

"Oh no," she sighed. "It seems to me that I merely play at everything.
I could cry sometimes when I think how I go on."

"At twenty?"

"That is old enough," she smiled, archly.

"Stephanie," he asked, cautiously, "how old are you, exactly?"

"I will be twenty-one in April," she answered.

"Have your parents been very strict with you?"

She shook her head dreamily. "No; what makes you ask? They haven't
paid very much attention to me. They've always liked Lucille and
Gilbert and Ormond best." Her voice had a plaintive, neglected ring.
It was the voice she used in her best scenes on the stage.

"Don't they realize that you are very talented?"

"I think perhaps my mother feels that I may have some ability. My
father doesn't, I'm sure. Why?"

She lifted those languorous, plaintive eyes.

"Why, Stephanie, if you want to know, I think you're wonderful. I
thought so the other night when you were looking at those jades. It all
came over me. You are an artist, truly, and I have been so busy I have
scarcely seen it. Tell me one thing."

"Yes."

She drew in a soft breath, filling her chest and expanding her bosom,
while she looked at him from under her black hair. Her hands were
crossed idly in her lap. Then she looked demurely down.

"Look, Stephanie! Look up! I want to ask you something. You have known
something of me for over a year. Do you like me?"

"I think you're very wonderful," she murmured.

"Is that all?"

"Isn't that much?" she smiled, shooting a dull, black-opal look in his
direction.

"You wore my bracelet to-day. Were you very glad to get it?"

"Oh yes," she sighed, with aspirated breath, pretending a kind of
suffocation.

"How beautiful you really are!" he said, rising and looking down at her.

She shook her head.

"No."

"Yes!"

"No."

"Come, Stephanie! Stand by me and look at me. You are so tall and
slender and graceful. You are like something out of Asia."

She sighed, turning in a sinuous way, as he slipped his arm her. "I
don't think we should, should we?" she asked, naively, after a moment,
pulling away from him.

"Stephanie!"

"I think I'd better go, now, please."

Chapter XXVI

Love and War

It was during the earlier phases of his connection with Chicago
street-railways that Cowperwood, ardently interesting himself in
Stephanie Plato