for--culture."

His smile broadened into a laugh of genuine amusement.

"My dear Miss Orr," he protested, "I had no idea of intimating--"

Her look of passionate sincerity halted his words of apology.

"I am very much interested in the people here," she declared. "I
want--oh, so much--to be friends with them! I want it more than
anything else in the world! If they would only like me. But--they
don't."

"How can they help it?" he exclaimed. "Like you? They ought to
worship you! They shall!"

She shook her head sadly.

"No one can compel love," she said.

"Sometimes the love of one can atone for the indifference--even the
hostility of the many," he ventured.

But she had not stooped to the particular, he perceived. Her thoughts
were ranging wide over an unknown country whither, for the moment, he
could not follow. He studied her abstracted face with its strangely
aloof expression, like that of a saint or a fanatic, with a faint
renewal of previous misgivings.

"I am very much interested in Fanny Dodge," she said abruptly.