many confidences I
would have got in no other way. That is, in no other way save one, and
in that I had no desire to go, even had it been possible. Miss Trevor
was only nineteen, and in her eyes I was at least sixty.

"See here, Miss Trevor," I said to her one day after we had become more
or less intimate, "of course it's none of my business, but you didn't
feel very badly after the Celebrity went away, did you?"

Her reply was frank and rather staggering.

"Yes, I did. I was engaged to him, you know."

"Engaged to him! I had no idea he ever got that far," I exclaimed.

Miss Trevor laughed merrily.

"It was my fault," she said; "I pinned him down, and he had to propose.
There was no way out of it. I don't mind telling you."

I did not know whether to be flattered or aggrieved by this avowal.

"You know," she went on, her tone half apologetic, "the day after he came
he told me who he was, and I wanted to stop the people we passed and
inform them of the lion I was walking with. And I was quite carried away
by the honor of his attentions: any girl would have been, you know."

"I suppose so," I assented.

"And I had heard and read so much of him, and I doted on his stories, and
all that. His heroes are divine, you must admit. And, Mr. Crocker," she
concluded with a charming naivety, "I just made up my mind I would have
him."

"Woman proposes, and man disposes," I laughed. "He escaped in spite of
you."

She looked at me queerly.

"Only a jest," I said hurriedly; "your escape is the one to be thankful
for. You might have married him, like the young woman in The Sybarites.
You remember, do you not, that the hero of that book sacrifices himself
for the lady who adores him, but whom he has ceased to adore?"

"Yes, I remember," she laughed; "I believe I know that book by heart."

"Think of the countless girls he must have relieved of their affections
before their eyes were opened," I continued with mock gravity. "Think of
the charred trail he has left behind him. A man of that sort ought to be
put under heavy bonds not to break any more hearts. But a kleptomaniac
isn't responsible, you understand. And it isn't worth while to bear any
malice."

"Oh, I don't bear any malice now," she said. "I did at first,
naturally. But it all seems very ridiculous now I have had time to think
it over. I believe, Mr. Crocker, that I never really cared for him."

"Simply an idol shattered this time," I suggested, "and not a hear