Increasingly aware of her own weakness, she constantly attempted to
lead the conversation into impersonal channels, speaking preferably of
his work.

"Tell me," she said, negligently fanning herself, "what new inspiration
have you drawn from your stay at the seaside?"

"Why," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "volumes and volumes of it. I
shall write the great novel of my life after I am once more quietly
installed at Riverside Drive."

"The great American novel?" she rejoined.

"Perhaps."

"Who will be your hero--Clarke?"

There was a slight touch of malice in her words, or rather in the pause
between the penultimate word and the last. Ernest detected its presence,
and knew that her love for Reginald was dead. Stiff and cold it lay in
her heart's chamber--beside how many others?--all emboxed in the coffin
of memory.

"No," he replied after a while, a little piqued by her suggestion,
"Clarke is not the hero. What makes you think that he casts a spell on
everything I do?"

"Dear child," she replied, "I know him. He cannot fail to impress his
powerful personality upon all with whom he comes in contact, to the