But he did not go to the Leightons again for so long a time that Mrs. Leighton asked Alma what had happened.  Alma told her.

“And he won’t come any more?” her mother sighed, with reserved censure.

“Oh, I think he will.  He couldn’t very well come the next night.  But he has the habit of coming, and with Mr. Beaton habit is everything—­even the habit of thinking he’s in love with some one.”

“Alma,” said her mother, “I don’t think it’s very nice for a girl to let a young man keep coming to see her after she’s refused him.”

“Why not, if it amuses him and doesn’t hurt the girl?”

“But it does hurt her, Alma.  It—­it’s indelicate.  It isn’t fair to him; it gives him hopes.”

“Well, mamma, it hasn’t happened in the given case yet.  If Mr. Beaton comes again, I won’t see him, and you can forbid him the house.”

“If I could only feel sure, Alma,” said her mother, taking up another branch of the inquiry, “that you really knew your own mind, I should be easier about it.”

“Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma.  I do know my own mind; and, what’s worse, I know Mr. Beaton’s mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he spoke to me the other night simply because Mr. Fulkerson’s engagement had broken him all up.”

“What expressions!” Mrs. Leighton lamented.

“He let it out himself,” Alma went on.  “And you wouldn’t have thought it was very flattering yourself.  When I’m made love to, after this, I prefer to be made love to in an off-year, when there isn’t another engaged couple anywhere about.”

“Did you tell him that, Alma?”

“Tell him that!  What do you mean, mamma?  I may be indelicate, but I’m not quite so indelicate as that.”

“I didn’t mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, but I wanted to warn you.  I think Mr. Beaton was very much in earnest.”

“Oh, so did he!”

“And you didn’t?”

“Oh yes, for the time being.  I suppose he’s very much in earnest with Miss Vance at times, and with Miss Dryfoos at others.  Sometimes he’s a painter, and sometimes he’s an architect, and sometimes he’s a sculptor.  He has too many gifts—­too many tastes.”

“And if Miss Vance and Miss Dryfoos—­”

“Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma!  It’s getting so dreadfully personal!”

“Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your real feeling in the matter.”

“And you know that I don’t want to let you—­especially when I haven’t got any real feeling in the matter.  But I should think—­speaking in the abstract entirely—­that if either of those arts was ever going to be in earnest about him, it would want his exclusive devotion for a week at least.”

“I didn’t know,” said Mrs. Leighton, “that he was doing anything now at the others.  I thought he was entirely taken up with his work on ’Every Other Week.’”

“Oh, he is! he is!”