What was the use of telling a girl like that—­all flushed with beauty and vanity, and gay expectation—­about his having a house to build?  What would it seem to her,—­his busy life all spring and summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting, chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into his new rich house by October?  When she had only to make herself lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a dream, and call it her profession?  When Frank Sunderline knew there was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain; only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare?

It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done before.  She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her glistening silk dress.  He must leave her now, with the shimmer of them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely, lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all enticing, outward complement and suggestion.

He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a mistake.

Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses.

Was she glad?  Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this poor side of her—­making a mistake?  Losing, perhaps, so much?

“Marion has something better in her than that,” she made herself say, when she replied.  “Perhaps it will come out again, some day.”

“I think she has.  Perhaps it will.  You have always been good and generous to her, Ray.”

What did he say that for?  Why did he make it impossible for her to let it go so?

“Don’t!” she exclaimed.  “I am not generous to her this minute!  I couldn’t help, when you said it, being satisfied—­that you should see.  I don’t know whether it is mean or true in me, that I always do want people to see the truth.”

She covered it up with that last sentence.  The first left by itself, might have shown him more.  It was certainly so; that there was a little severity in Ray Ingraham, growing out of her clear perception and her very honesty.  When she could see a thing, it seemed as if everybody ought to see it; if they did not, as if she ought to show them, that they might fairly understand.  A half understanding made her restless, even though the other half were less kind and comfortable.

“You show the truth of yourself, too,” said Frank.  “And that is grand, at any rate.”