“He does care for you, now.  You can see it.  Why do you encourage him to come here?”

“I don’t,” said Alma.  “I will tell him to keep away if you like.  But whether he comes or goes, it will be the same.”

“Not to him, Alma!  He is in love with you!”

“He has never said so.”

“And you would really let him say so, when you intend to refuse him?”

“I can’t very well refuse him till he does say so.”

This was undeniable.  Mrs. Leighton could only demand, in an awful tone, “May I ask why—­if you cared for him; and I know you care for him still you will refuse him?”

Alma laughed.  “Because—­because I’m wedded to my Art, and I’m not going to commit bigamy, whatever I do.”

“Alma!”

“Well, then, because I don’t like him—­that is, I don’t believe in him, and don’t trust him.  He’s fascinating, but he’s false and he’s fickle.  He can’t help it, I dare say.”

“And you are perfectly hard.  Is it possible that you were actually pleased to have Mr. Fulkerson tease you about Mr. Dryfoos?”

“Oh, good-night, now, mamma!  This is becoming personal”

PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

    Artists never do anything like other people
    Ballast of her instinctive despondency
    Clinging persistence of such natures
    Dividend:  It’s a chicken before it’s hatched
    Gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it
    Hopeful recklessness
    How much can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing
    I cannot endure this—­this hopefulness of yours
    If you dread harm enough it is less likely to happen
    It must be your despair that helps you to bear up
    Marry for love two or three times
    No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another
    Patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius
    Person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it
    Say when he is gone that the woman gets along better without him
    Shouldn’t ca’ fo’ the disgrace of bein’ poo’—­its inconvenience
    Timidity of the elder in the presence of the younger man

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES

By William Dean Howells

PART THIRD

I.

The scheme of a banquet to celebrate the initial success of ’Every Other Week’ expanded in Fulkerson’s fancy into a series.  Instead of the publishing and editorial force, with certain of the more representative artists and authors sitting down to a modest supper in Mrs. Leighton’s parlors, he conceived of a dinner at Delmonico’s, with the principal literary and artistic, people throughout the country as guests, and an inexhaustible hospitality to reporters and correspondents, from whom paragraphs, prophetic and historic, would flow weeks before and after the