ke a beginning--turn
over a new leaf. Can't you help me to inscribe a good resolution of the
most iron-clad description on the stainless page? I've lain awake all
night composing one. Wouldn't you like to hear it?"

"I can't see what good that would do," she said, with some relenting
toward a smile, in which he instantly prepared himself to bask.

"But you will when I've done it. Now listen!"

"Please don't go on." She cut him short with a return to her severity,
which he would not recognise.

"Well, perhaps I'd better not," he consented. "It's rather a long
resolution, and I don't know that I've committed it perfectly yet. But
I do assure you that if you were disgusted last night, you were not the
only one. I was immensely disgusted myself; and why I wanted you to tell
me so, was because when I have a strong pressure brought to bear I can
brace up, and do almost anything," he said, dropping into earnest. Then
he rose lightly again, and added, "You have no idea how unpleasant it
is to lie awake all night throwing dust in the eyes of an accusing
conscience."

"It must have been, if you didn't succeed," said Alice drily.

"Yes, that's it--that's just the point. If I'd succeeded, I should be
all right, don't you see. But it was a difficult case." She turned her
face away, but he saw the smile on her cheek, and he laughed as if this
were what he had been trying to make her do. "I got beaten. I had to
give up, and own it. I had to say that I had thrown my chance away, and
I had better take myself off." He looked at her with a real anxiety in
his gay eyes.

"The boat goes just after lunch, I believe," she said indifferently.

"Oh yes, I shall have time to get lunch before I go," he said, with
bitterness. "But lunch isn't the only thing; it isn't even the main
thing, Miss Pasmer."

"No?" She hardened her heart.

He waited for her to say something more, and then he went on. "The
question is whether there's time to undo last night, abolish it, erase
it from the calendar of recorded time--sponge it out, in short--and
get back to yesterday afternoon." She made no reply to this. "Don't
you think it was a very pleasant picnic, Miss Pasmer?" he asked, with
pensive respectfulness.

"Very," she answered drily.

He cast a glance at the woods that bordered the road on either side.
"That weird forest--I shall never forget it."

"No; it was something to remember," she said.

"And the blueberry patch? We mustn't forget the