sponsibility in the case of Randolph Anderson were due
to an entirely different influence from any which had hitherto come
into her life. Charlotte, although she was past the very first of
young girlhood, being twenty, was curiously undeveloped emotionally.
She had never had any lovers, and the fault had been her own, from a
strange persistence of childhood in her temperament. She had not
attracted, from her own utter lack of responsiveness. She was like an
instrument which will not respond to the touch on certain notes, and
presently the player wearies.

She was a girl of strong and jealous affections, but the electric
circuits in her nature were not yet established. Then, also, she had
not been a child who had made herself the heroine of her own dreams,
and that had hindered her emotional development.

"Charlotte," one of her school-mates, had asked her once, "do you
ever amuse yourself by imagining that you have a lover?"

Charlotte had stared at the girl, a beautiful, early matured,
innocently shameless creature. "No," said she. "I don't understand
what you mean, Rosamond."

"The next moonlight night," said the girl, "Imagine that you have a
lover."

"What if I did?"

"It would make you very happy, almost as happy as if you had a real
one," said the girl, who was only a child in years, though, on
account of her size, she had been put into long dresses. She had far
outstripped the boys of her own age, who were rather shy of her.

Charlotte, who was still in short dresses, looked at her, full of
scorn and a mysterious shame. "I don't want any lover at all,"
declared she. "I don't want an imaginary one, or a real one, either.
I've got my papa, and that's all I want." At that time Charlotte
still clung to her doll, and the doll was in her mind, but she did
not say doll to the other girl.

"Well, I don't care," said the other girl, defiantly. "You will
sometime."

"I sha'n't, either," declared Charlotte. "I never shall be so silly,
Rosamond Lane."

"You will, too."

"I never will. You needn't think because you are so awful silly
everybody else is."

"I ain't any sillier than anybody else, and you'll be just as silly
yourself, so now," said Rosamond.

After that, when Charlotte saw the child sitting sunken in a reverie
with the color deepening on her cheeks, her lips pouting, and her
eyes misty, she would pass indignantly. She remembered her in after
years with contempt. She spoke of her to Ina as the s