'People who are worth knowing at all are known at once or never known,' she said promptly and very dogmatically.
'Young ladies do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves.'
'I am afraid I do sometimes—too much,' she said.
'I thought it at least possible.'
'Now you know. Well, are you going to ask me to marry your friend Mr. Hamilton?'
'No, indeed, Miss Langley. That would be a cruel injustice and wrong to him and to you. He must marry someone who loves him; you must marry someone whom you love. I am sorry for my poor friend—this will hurt him. But he cannot blame you, and I cannot blame you. He has some comfort—he has Gloria to fight for some day.'
'Put it nicely—very nicely to him,' Helena said, softening now that all was over. 'Tell him—won't you?—that I am ever so fond of him; and tell him that this must not make the least difference in our friendship. No one shall ever know from me.'
'I will put it all as well as I can,' said the Dictator; 'but I am afraid it must make a difference to him. It made a difference to me—when I was a young man of about his age.'
'You were disappointed?' Helena asked, in rather tremulous tone.
'More than that; I think I was deceived. I was ever so much worse off than Hamilton, for there was bitterness in my story, and there can be none in his. But I have survived—as you see.'