r shrinking away from people. No doubt most
people would jar on you."

"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should not like to despise
anybody. I should have loved to have friends: only I have never had the
gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful that I am not brilliant--I
might so easily have become unendurable and full of self-conceit."

"Ah, you are something better than brilliant," he exclaimed. "It needs
an exceptional spirit to appreciate you. You are so much out of the
ordinary in every way, in looks----"

"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have no looks. I have no
illusions about that."

"Look at your own portrait," he insisted. "I say it is the kind of
beauty it needs a gift to appreciate. In beauty--as in everything
else--the crowd runs after the obvious and the commonplace."

"You are the first that ever thought I possessed good looks. You have
given them to me."

"I have not even done you justice. I have omitted more than I have
suggested. My sister thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends who
have seen the picture share her opinion."

She was silent, almost distressed; she could not meet his gaze, but
turned her eyes away.

"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated," he continued. "You are
above conventional compliments. I withdraw what I said before. You are
_not_ like other women."

Her breath came and went as she listened, but she smiled bravely.

"At any rate I am not like _some_ women. I never could take any of the
deeper aspects of life in a merely frivolous spirit. With me it is a
loyal, deep friendship, or nothing."

He took her hand again. "Believe me, dear child, the friendship on my
part is equally loyal and deep. It is for life."

"For life," she murmured, suddenly grown pale.

He dashed in, determined to strike home.

"I prize you at your full worth, since I am one of those who can measure
it. I have the deepest affection for you. I believe I could make you
happy. Don't you understand? I offer you my whole life--that is, if you
think me worthy."

"Worthy!" she echoed, in dazed distress. "How can you think me worthy of
you! I have lived in narrow retirement. I am nothing."

He seized both her hands now. "No more of this. I ask for your promise."

"I love you with all my heart and soul. But I am not good enough for
you."

"I thought we agreed you were not like other women, and yet there is
this stiff-necked obstinacy." He drew her nearer to him, and k