ange as it was, it dispelled instantly his engrossing
shyness.

"I'm not bored," he said, "I'm merely puzzled."

"Oh, I know," Gerty nodded, "but you'll get over it. I puzzle everybody
at first, but it doesn't last because I'm really as clear as running
water. My gayety and my good spirits are but the joys of flippancy, you
see."

"I don't see," protested Trent, his eyes warming.

She laughed softly, as if rather pleased than otherwise by the frankness
of his admiration. "You haven't lost as yet the divine faith of youth,"
she said, carelessly flicking the ashes of her cigarette upon the little
table at her elbow. Then, tossing the burned end into a silver tray, she
pushed it from her with a decisive movement. "I've had six," she
observed, "and that's my limit."

"What I'm trying to understand," confessed Trent, leaning forward in his
earnestness, "is why you should care so greatly for Miss Wilde?"

Gerty flashed up suddenly from her cushions. "And pray why shouldn't I?"
she demanded.

"Because," he hesitated an instant and then advanced with the audacity
born of ignorance, "you're as much alike as a thrush and a paroquet."

She laughed again.

"So you consider me a paroquet?"

"In comparison with Laura Wilde."

"Well, I'd have said a canary," she remarked indulgently, "but we'll let
it pass. I don't see though," she serenely continued, "why a paroquet
shouldn't have a feeling for a thrush?"

He shook his head, smiling. "It seems a bit odd, that's all."

"Then, if it's any interest to you to know it," pursued Gerty, with a
burst of confidence, "I'd walk across Brooklyn Bridge, every step of the
way, on my knees for Laura. That's because I believe in her," she wound
up emphatically, "and because, too, I don't happen to believe much in
anybody else."

"So you know her well?"

"I went to school with her and I adored her then, but I adore her even
more to-day. Somehow she always seems to be knocking for the good in
one, and it has to come out at last because she stands so patiently and
waits. She makes me over every time she meets me, shapes me after some
ideal image of me she has in her brain, and then I'm filled with
desperate shame if I don't seem at least a little bit to correspond with
it."

"I understand," said Trent slowly; "one feels her as one feels a strong
wind on a high mountain. There's a wonderful bigness about her."

"It's because she's different," explained Gerty, "she's kept so apart