regild my halo--if there's any of it left! I gather you aren't very
well up in women, or girls, Roy?"

"No--I'm not. Perhaps it makes me seem to you a bit of a fool?"

"Quite the reverse. It's all along been a part of your charm."

"My--charm?"

There was more of tenderness than amusement in her low laugh.
"Precisely! If you didn't possess--_some_ magnetic quality, could I have
been drawn away from a man--like Lance, when I'd nearly made up my
mind--to face the music."

For answer, he kissed her captured hand.

Then: "Roy, if it doesn't hurt too much," she urged, "will you tell me
first--just--what Lance said?"

It would hurt, horridly. But it was as well she should know; and not a
word need he withhold. Could there be a finer tribute to his friend? It
was his own share in their last unforgettable talk that could not be
reproduced.

"Yes--I'll tell you," he said. And, his half-closed eyes resting on the
sunlit hills, he told her, in a voice from which all feeling was
carefully expunged. Only so could he achieve the telling; and she
listened without interruption, for which he felt grateful,
exceedingly....

When it was over he merely moved his head and looked up at her; and she
returned his look, her eyes heavy with tears. Mutually their fingers
tightened.

"Thank you," she said. "It makes me ... ashamed, but it makes me proud."

"It made _me_ angry and bewildered," said Roy. "If you really were ...
coming his way, what the devil did _I_ do to upset it all? Of course I
admired you; and I was interested--on his account. But--I had no
thought--I was absorbed in other things----"

She nodded slowly, not looking at him. "Quite so. And I suppose--being
me--I didn't choose that a man should dance with me, ride with me,
obviously admire me, and yet remain absorbed in other things. And--being
you--of course it never struck you that, for my kind of girl, your
provocatively casual attitude almost amounted to a challenge.
Besides--as I said--you were charming; you were different. Perhaps--if
I'd felt a shade less sure--of Lance, if he'd had the wit even to
_seem_ keen on some one else ... he might have saved himself. As it
was--you were irresistible."

She heard him grit his teeth; and turned with swift compunction.

"My poor Roy! Am I jarring you badly? I suppose, if I talked till
midnight, I'd never succeed in making a man like you understand how
purely instinctive it all is. Analysed, like this, it sounds
cold