"I wish I knew what troubled him!" he exclaimed.
"I wish so, too, if you could aid him," she answered, earnestly.
"Who knows but I may?" he asked, with a smile that she hoped would prove prophetic.
CHAPTER XI.
ARCHIE PAYS ATTENTION.
Roseleaf took rooms at his old lodgings in the city, and set in earnest about the work of beginning his great novel. He had interviews with Mr. Gouger, at which he detailed the slight thread of plot which he already had in mind, profiting by the critic's shrewd suggestions. It was decided that he should portray, at the beginning, a youth much like himself, who was to fall in love with an angelically pure maiden. The outline of their respective characters were to be sketched with care, and sundry obstacles to their union were to be developed as the story progressed. Gouger warned his young friend not to write too fast, and to content himself for the present with delineating the phase of love with which he had become familiar.
"Later on," he said, "when your hero finds that this girl is not all his bright fancy painted her—when it is proved beyond a doubt that she has played him false, that she has another lover—"
Roseleaf turned pale.