this exchange of hospitality were almost at an end.  That night, for the hundredth time, young Corbin had decided it would have been much better for him if they had come to an end many weeks previous, for the part he played in the trio was a difficult one.  It was that of the lover who will not take “no” for an answer.  The lover who will take no, and goes on his way disconsolate, may live to love another day, and everyone is content; but the one who will not have no, who will not hear of it, nor consider it, has much to answer for in making life a burden to himself and all around him.

When Corbin joined the Warriners on their trip up the Nile it was considered by all of them, in their ignorance, a happy accident.  Other mothers, more worldly than Mrs. Warriner, with daughters less attractive, gave her undeserved credit for having lured into her party one of the young men of Boston who was most to be desired as a son-in-law.  But the mind of Mrs. Warriner, so far as Mr. Corbin was concerned, was quite free from any such consideration; so was the mind of the young bachelor; certainly Miss Warriner held no tender thoughts concerning him.  The families of the Warriners and the Corbins had been friends ever since the cowpath crossed the Common.  Before Corbin entered Harvard Miss Warriner and he had belonged to the same dancing-class.  Later she had danced with him at four class-days, and many times between.  When he graduated, she had gone abroad with her mother, and he had joined the Somerset Club, and played polo at Pride’s Crossing, and talked vaguely of becoming a lawyer, and of re-entering Harvard by the door of the Law School, chiefly, it was supposed, that he might have another year of the football team.  He was very young in spirit, very big and athletic, very rich, and without a care or serious thought.  Miss Warriner was to him, then, no more than a friend; to her he was a boy, one of many nice, cultivated Harvard boys, who occasionally called upon her and talked football.  On the face of things, she was not the sort of girl he should have loved.  But for some saving clause in him, he should have loved and married one of the many other girls who had belonged to the same dancing-class, who would have been known as “Mrs. Tom” Corbin, who would have been sought after as a chaperone, and who would have stood up in her cart when he played polo and shouted at him across the field to “ride him off.”

Miss Warriner, on the contrary, was much older than he in everything but years, and was conscious of the fact.  She was a serious, self-centred young person, and satisfied with her own thoughts, unless her companion gave her better ones.  She concerned herself with the character and ideas of her friends.  If a young man lacked ideas, the fact that he possessed wealth and good manners could not save him.  If these attributes had been pointed out to her as part of his assets she would have been surprised.  She was not impressed with her own good looks and fortune—­she took them for granted; so why should they count with her in other people?