 pages at a time without stopping. Also, if you bring together two clever men, don't make them talk cleverly. Clever people do not. It is only the stupid who think they must talk cleverly all the time. And don't detain your reader too long: if you must have a sunset, let it be a short one. I could give you many more hints which would be useful to you."

"But why not use your own hints for yourself?" she suggested.

"That would be selfish of me," he said solemnly. "I wish you to profit by them."

"You are learning to be unselfish at a very rapid rate," Bernardine said.

At that moment Mrs. Reffold came into the breakfast-room, and, seeing
Bernardine, gave her a stiff bow.
"I thought you and Mrs. Reffold were such friends," Robert Allitsen said.

Bernardine then told him of her last interview with Mrs. Reffold.

"Well, if you feel uncomfortable, it is as it should be," he said. "I don't see what business you had to point out to Mrs. Reffold her duty. I dare say she knows it quite well though she may not choose to do it. I am sure I should resent it, if any one pointed out my duty to me. Every one knows his own duty. And it is his own affair whether or not he does it."

"I wonder if you are right," Bernardine said. "I never meant to presume; but her indifference had exasperated me."

"Why should you be exasperated about other people's affairs?" he said.
"And why interfere at all?"
"Being interested is not the same as being interfering," she replied quickly.

"It is difficult to be the one without being the other," he said. "It requires a genius. There is a genius for being sympathetic as well as a genius for being good. And geniuses are few."

"But I knew one," Bernardine said. "There was a friend to whom in the first days of my trouble I turned for sympathy. When others only irritated, she could soothe. She had only to come into my room, and all was well with me."

There were tears in Bernardine's eyes as she spoke.

"Well," said the Disagreeable Man kindly, "and where is your genius now?"

"She went away, she and hers," Bernardine said "
