for having allowed her to be desperately in love with him. He should
have known he was not worthy of such a love as hers. He should have
known that the real prince was waiting only just round the corner.

As a rule the rejected ones behaved well. Each decided Aline was much
too wonderful a creature for him, and continued to love her cautiously
and from a distance. None of them ever spoke or thought ill of her and
would gladly have punched any one who did. It was only the women
whose young men Aline had temporarily confiscated, and then returned
saddened and chastened, who were spiteful. And they dared say no more
than that Aline would probably have known her mind better if she had
had a mother to look after her. This, coming to the ears of Aline,
caused her to reply that a girl who could not keep straight herself,
but needed a mother to help her, would not keep straight had she a
dozen mothers. As she put it cheerfully, a girl who goes wrong and
then pleads "no mother to guide her" is like a jockey who pulls a race
and then blames the horse.

Each of the young men Aline rejected married some one else and,
except when the name of Aline Proctor in the theatrical
advertisements or in electric lights on Broadway gave him a
start, forgot that for a month her name and his own had been
linked together from Portland to San Francisco. But the girl he
married did not forget. She never understood what the public saw
in Aline Proctor. That Aline was the queen of musical comedy she
attributed to the fact that Aline knew the right people and got
herself written about in the right way. But that she could sing,
dance, act; that she possessed compelling charm; that she "got
across" not only to the tired business man, the wine agent, the
college boy, but also to the children and the old ladies, was to