"That was it?" asked Corey.
The girl hesitated. "It has rather a sentimental name. Did you ever read it?--Tears, Idle Tears."
"Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous book with ladies. They break their hearts over it. Did it make you cry?"
"Oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said Penelope, laughing; "and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. Then the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I guess it's rather forced."
"Her giving him up to the other one?"
"Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared for him first. Why should she have done it? What right had she?"
"I don't know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice----"
"But it WASN'T self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone. She was sacrificing him too; and for some one who couldn't appreciate him half as much as she could. I'm provoked with myself when I think how I cried over that book--for I did cry. It's silly--it's wicked for any one to do what that girl did. Why can't they let people have a chance to behave reasonably in stories?"
"Perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," suggested Corey, with a smile.
"It would be novel, at any rate," said the girl. "But so it would in real life, I suppose," she added.