He sprang to her side and took her hand.
Quickly withdrawing it, she said with a little decisive node: "You must sit down and sit still, for I have along, tiresome story to tell, and a very prosaic favor to ask;" for she had resolved, "he shall go forward now with his eyes open, and he shall never say I won him by seeming what I was not. If I can't deal right by Jennie Burton, I will by him."
"I shall find no service prosaic; see, I'm all attention," and he did look very eager indeed.
"That encyclopaedia suggests my story, and I may have to refer incidentally to myself."
"Leave the book out; I'll listen for ages."
"I should be out of breath before that. Mr. Van Berg, I'm in earnest; I don't know anything worth knowing. My life has been worse than wasted, and the only two things I understand well are dancing and flirting. Now I know you are disgusted, but its the truth. My old, fashionable life seems to me like the tawdry scenes of a second-rate theatre, where everything is for effect and nothing is real. I have hosts of acquaintances, but I haven't any friends except Mr. Eltinge."
"And Harold Van Berg," put in the artist, promptly.
"It's good of you to say that after such confessions," she continued, with a shy glance. "I hope it wasn't out of politeness. Well, I've waked up at last. I think you first startled me out of my insufferable stupidity and silliness at the concert garden, and I'm very much obliged to you for the remark you made to Cousin Ik on that occasion."
"Yes, I remember," Van Berg groaned. "I waked you up as if I were trying to put your shoulder out of joint. Well, I'm waking up also."
"You have no idea what a perfect sham of a life I led," and she told him frankly of her wasted school days and of her trip abroad, for which she had no preparation of mind or character. "A butterfly might have flown over the same ground and come back just as wise," she said. "But I have suddenly entered a new world of truth and duty, and I am bewildered; I am anxious to fit myself for the society of sensible, cultivated people, and I am discouraged by the task before me. I went to father's library yesterday and was perfectly appalled by the number of books and subjects that I know nothing about. The fact that I stumbled into that encyclopaedia, which gave you the laugh against me, shows how helpless I am. Indeed, I'm like a little child trying to find its way through a wilderness of knowledge. I blundered on as far as Amsterdam, and there I stopped in despair. I didn't know what was before me, and I was getting everything I had been over confused and mixed up in my mind. And now, Mr. Van Berg, with your thorough education and wide experience you can tell me what to read and how to read."