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 had again been frosted into a departure. "I hope you aren't going to keep this up too long, Claire."

"Keep what up?"

"Now, now!" Mrs. Ambler protested. "There wouldn't be anything out of the way in letting that good-looking boy talk to you. He seems very nice indeed, and as he and his mother are probably going all the way through, I don't see" She paused. "It might help you to get out of yourself a little."

"I don't want to be got out of myself."

"Now, now!" Mrs. Ambler said again, and she smiled, though not unsympathetically. "You don't think this is going to last, do you, dear—at your age? How long do you suppose it will be before you'll be interested in seeing something of pleasant young gentlemen again?"

"I never will," Claire said. "Never."

"But if only on your own account you ought"

"No," Claire interrupted. "On their account is what I mean."

"Good gracious! You haven't become precisely poison to gentlemen, my child!"

"Yes," Claire said, in a dead voice. "That's all I am."

Her mother urged no more, and the unhappy girl