"I've met her--yes," he answered coldly.

But her enthusiasm was at white heat, and he saw what he had thought
mere prettiness in her warm to positive beauty. "And you adore her work
as I do?" she exclaimed.

After a moment's hesitation his ardour flashed out to meet her own. "Oh,
yes, I adore her work and her!" he said.




CHAPTER VI

SHOWS THAT MR. WORLDLY-WISE-MAN MAY BELONG TO EITHER SEX


Several afternoons later Trent was to have further light thrown on the
character of Christina Coles by a chance remark of Roger Adams, into
whose office he had dropped for a moment as he was on his way to make
his first call upon Mrs. Bridewell.

After a few friendly enquiries about the young man's own work, and the
report of a promising word from the great Benson, Adams took up a letter
lying loose among the papers on his big littered desk.

"Half the tragedy in New York is contained in a letter like this," he
observed. "Do you know, by the way, that the mass of outside literary
workers drawn in at last by the whirlpool constitutes almost a
population? Take this girl, now, she is so consumed by her ambition, for