there any tragedy?" he asked, with the levity of complete confidence.

She turned away from him, at this, with a strange and charming laugh
and a "Perhaps that will be for you to determine!" But before he
could disclaim such a responsibility she had faced him again and was
talking about Nona Vincent as if she had been the most interesting of
their friends and her situation at that moment an irresistible appeal
to their sympathy. Nona Vincent was the heroine of the play, and
Mrs. Alsager had taken a tremendous fancy to her. "I can't TELL you
how I like that woman!" she exclaimed in a pensive rapture of
credulity which could only be balm to the artistic spirit.

"I'm awfully glad she lives a bit. What I feel about her is that
she's a good deal like YOU," Wayworth observed.

Mrs. Alsager stared an instant and turned faintly red. This was
evidently a view that failed to strike her; she didn't, however,
treat it as a joke. "I'm not impressed with the resemblance. I
don't see myself doing what she does."

"It isn't so much what she DOES," the young man argued, drawing out
his moustache.

"But what she does is the whole point. She simply tells her love--I
should never do that."

"If you repudiate such a proceeding with such energy, why do you like
her for it?"

"It isn't what I like her for."