little restaurants; she professed illness when he sent for her to join
him in some harmless junketing. She was slowly slipping away from him;
no, drifting, since he made no real effort to hold her. And why had he
made no real effort? Sometimes he thought he could answer this
question, and then again he knew that he could not. Ah, if he only
loved her! What a helpmeet: cheerful, resourceful, full of good humor
and practical philosophy, a brilliant wit, with all the finished
graces of a goddess. Ah, if indeed he only loved her! This thought
kept running through his mind persistently; it had done so for days;
but it had always led him back to the starting point. Love is not
always reasoning with itself. Perhaps--and the thought filled him with
regret--perhaps he was indeed incapable of loving any one as his
poet's fancy believed he ought to love. And this may account for the
truth of the statement that genius is rarely successful in love; the
ideal is so high that it is out of the reach of life as we, genius or
clod, live it.

"Isn't this determination rather sudden?" he asked, when the pause
grew insupportable.

"I have been thinking of it for some time," she replied, smiling. A
woman always finds herself at ease during such crises. "Only, I hadn't
exactly made up my mind. You were at work?" glancing at the desk.

"Yes, but I'm through for the night. It's only a scenario, and I am
not entirely satisfied with it."

She walked over to the desk and picked up a sheet at random. She was a
privileged person in these rooms. Warrington never had any nervous
dread when she touched his manuscript.