"No, I haven't."

"I show there that love is a reasoned emotion that springs from mutual knowledge, increasing over an extended period of time, and a community of tastes. How can you love a girl when you have never spoken to her and don't even know her name?"

"I do know her name."

"How?"

"I looked through the telephone directory till I found out who lived at Number 16, East Seventy-Ninth Street. It took me about a week, because...."

"Sixteen East Seventy-Ninth Street? You don't mean that this girl you've been staring at is little Molly Waddington?"

George started.

"Waddington is the name, certainly. That's why I was such an infernal time getting to it in the book. Waddington, Sigsbee H." George choked emotionally, and gazed at his friend with awed eyes. "Hamilton! Hammy, old man! You—you don't mean to say you actually know her? Not positively know her?"

"Of course I know her. Know her intimately. Many's the time I've seen her in her bath-tub."

George quivered from head to foot.

"It's a lie! A foul and contemptible...."

"When she was a child."

"Oh, when she was a child?" George became calmer. "Do you mean to say you've known her since she was a child? Why, then you must be in love with her yourself."

"Nothing of the kind."

"You stand there and tell me," said George incredulously, "that you have known this wonderful girl for many years and are not in love with her?"

"I do."

George regarded his friend with a gentle pity. He could only explain this extraordinary statement by supposing that there was some sort of a kink in Hamilton Beamish. Sad, for in so many ways he was such a fine fellow.

"The sight of her has never made you feel that, to win one smile, you could scale the skies and pluck out the stars and lay them at her feet?"

 Prev. P 18/230 next