"

"Oh, half these people were in London last spring. They give you the
impression that they just run over to the States occasionally. Mr.
Van Dusen says he keeps his apartments in whatever street it is off
Piccadilly, it's so much more convenient."

On the steamer crossing the lake, King hoped for an opportunity to make
an explanation to Irene. But when the opportunity came he found it very
difficult to tell what it was he wanted to explain, and so blundered on
in commonplaces.

"You like Bar Harbor so well," he said, "that I suppose your father will
be buying a cottage here?"

"Hardly. Mr. Meigs" (King thought there was too much Meigs in the
conversation) "said that he had once thought of doing so, but he likes
the place too well for that. He prefers to come here voluntarily. The
trouble about owning a cottage at a watering-place is that it makes a
duty of a pleasure. You can always rent, father says. He has noticed
that usually when a person gets comfortably established in a summer
cottage he wants to rent it."

"And you like it better than Newport?"

"On some accounts--the air, you know, and--"

"I want to tell you," he said breaking in most illogically--"I want to
tell you, Miss Benson, that it was all a wretched mistake at Newport
that morning. I don't suppose you care, but I'm afraid you are not quite
just to me."

"I don't think I was unjust." The girl's voice was low, and she spoke
slowly. "You couldn't help it. We can't any of us help it. We cannot
make the world over, you know." And she looked up at him with a faint
little smile.

"But you didn't understand. I didn't care for any of those people. It
was just an accident. Won't you believe me? I do not ask much. But I
cannot have you think I'm a coward."

"I never did, Mr. King. Perhaps you do not see what society is as I do.
People think they can face it when they cannot. I can't say what I mean,
and I think we'd better not talk about it."

The boat was landing; and the party streamed up into the woods, and
with jest and laughter and feigned anxiety about danger and assistance,
picked its way over the rough, stony path. It was such a scramble as
young ladies enjoy, especially if they are city bred, for it seems to
them an achievement of more magnitude than to the country lasses who see
nothing uncommon or heroic in following a cow-path. And the young men
like it because it brings out the trusting, dependent, clinging nature
of girls. King wishe