she was a woman of nineteen; but, as she had been before the
public ever since she was eleven, the women declared she was not a day
under twenty-six; and the men knew she could not possibly be over
sixteen!

Aline's own idea of herself was that without some one in love with her
she could not exist--that, unless she knew some man cared for her and
for her alone, she would wither and die. As a matter of fact, whether
any one loved her or not did not in the least interest her. There were
several dozen men who could testify to that. They knew! What she
really wanted was to be head over ears in love--to adore some one, to
worship him, to imagine herself starving for him and making sacrifice
hits for him; but when the moment came to make the sacrifice hit and
marry the man, she invariably found that a greater, truer love had
arisen--for some one else.

This greater and truer love always made her behave abominably to the
youth she had just jilted. She wasted no time on post-mortems. She was
so eager to show her absolute loyalty to the new monarch that she
grudged every thought she ever had given the one she had cast into
exile. She resented him bitterly. She could not forgive him for
having allowed her to be desperately in love with him. He should have
known he was not worthy of such a love as hers. He should have known
that the real prince was waiting only just round the corner.

As a rule the rejected ones behaved well. Each decided Aline was much
too wonderful a creature for him, and continued to love her cautiously
and from a distance. None of them ever spoke or thought ill of her and
would gladly have punched any one who did. It was only the women whose
young men Aline had temporarily confiscated, and then returned saddened
and chastened, who were spiteful. And they dared say no more than that
Aline would probably have known her mind better if she had had a mother
to look after her. This, coming to the ears of Aline, caused her to
reply that a girl who could not keep straight herself, but needed a
mother to help her, would not keep straight had she a dozen mothers.
As she put it cheerfully, a girl who goes wrong and then pleads "no
mother to guide her" is like a jockey who pulls a race and then blames
the horse.

Each of the young men Aline rejected married some one else and, except
when the name of Aline Proctor in the theatrical advertisements or in
electric lights on Broadway gave him a start, forgot