Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.

“Yes, I know,” she said; “that’s the way Reggie loves me, too.”

Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.

“There’s a bench in St. James’s Park,” he said, “where we used to sit when she first came here, when she didn’t know so many people.  We used to go there in the morning and throw penny buns to the ducks.  That’s been my amusement this summer since you’ve all been away—­sitting on that bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks—­especially the black one, the one she used to like best.  And I make pilgrimages to all the other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she is with me.  And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she once said she felt sorry for him.  I do all the other absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing.  But to what end?  She knows how I care, and yet she won’t see why we can’t go on being friends as we once were.  What’s the use of it all?”

“She is young, I tell you,” repeated Miss Cavendish, “and she’s too sure of you.  You’ve told her you care; now try making her think you don’t care.”

Carroll shook his head impatiently.

“I will not stoop to such tricks and pretense, Marion,” he cried, impatiently.  “All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded.”

Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door.  “Such amateurs!” she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.

Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of Miss Cavendish.  Helen and he had met her when they first arrived in London, and as she had acted for a season in the United States, she adopted the two Americans—­and told Helen where to go for boots and hats, and advised Carroll about placing his plays.  Helen soon made other friends, and deserted the artists with whom her work had first thrown her.  She seemed to prefer the society of the people who bought her paintings, and who admired and made much of the painter.  As she was very beautiful and at an age when she enjoyed everything in life keenly and eagerly, to give her pleasure was in itself a distinct pleasure; and the worldly tired people she met were considering their own entertainment quite as much as hers when they asked her to their dinners and dances, or to spend a week with them in the country.  In her way, she was as independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was not in love, as he was, her life was not narrowed down to but one ideal.  But she was not so young as to consider herself infallible, and she had one excellent friend on whom she was dependent for advice and to whose directions she submitted implicitly.  This was Lady Gower, the only person to whom Helen had spoken of Carroll and of his great feeling for her.  Lady Gower, immediately after her marriage, had been a conspicuous and brilliant figure in that set in London