you very miserable?"

Her fingers were interlocked behind her small black head; and the
sympathy with which she regarded me was tenderly flavored with
amusement.

This much I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and
mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the
least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I
believe I never will."

"Oh--? But I don't count." The girl continued, with composure: "Or
rather, I have always counted your affairs, so that I know precisely
what it all amounts to."

"Sum total?"

"A lot of imitation emotions." She added hastily: "Oh, quite a good
imitation, dear; you are smooth enough to see to that. Why, I remember
once--when you read me that first sonnet, sitting all hunched up on
the little stool, and pretending you didn't know I knew who you meant
me to know it was for, and ending with a really very effective,
breathless sob--and caught my hand and pressed it to your forehead for
a moment--Why, that time I was thoroughly rattled and almost
believed--even I--that--" She shrugged. "And if I had been
younger--!" she said, half regretfully, for at this time Bettie was
very nearly twenty-two.

"Yes." The effective breathless sob responded to what had virtually
been an encore. "I have not forgotten."