do you?
I don't suppose I should ever have given them a second thought if you
hadn't seemed to feel so badly about my neglecting them; and I thought
you'd be pleased to have me try to make it up to them if I could."

"I know your motive was good--the noblest. Don't think that I did you
injustice, or that I was vexed because you went away with them."

"You sent me."

"Yes; and now I give you up to them altogether. It was a mistake, a
crime, for me to think we could be anything to each other when our love
began with a wrong to some one else."

"With a wrong to some one else?"

"You neglected them on Class Day after you saw me."

"Why, of course I did. How could I help it?"

A flush of pleasure came into the girl's pale face; but she banished it,
and continued gravely, "Then at Portland you were with them all day."

"You'd given me up--you'd thrown me over, Alice," he pleaded.

"I know that; I don't blame you. But you made them believe that you were
very much interested in them."

"I don't know what I did. I was perfectly desperate."

"Yes; it was my fault. And then, when they came to meet you at the
Museum, I had made you forget them; I'd made you wound them and insult
them again. No. I've thought it all out, and we never could be happy.
Don't think that I do it from any resentful motive."

"Alice? how could I think that?--Of you!"

"I have tried--prayed--to be purified from that, and I believe that I
have been."

"You never had a selfish thought."

"And I have come to see that you were perfectly right in what you did
last night. At first I was wounded."

"Oh, did I wound you, Alice?" he grieved.

"But afterward I could see that you belonged to them, and not me,
and--and I give you up to them. Yes, freely, fully."

Alice stood there, beautiful, pathetic, austere; and Dan had halted in
the spot to which he had advanced, when her eye forbade him to approach
nearer. He did not mean to joke, and it was in despair that he cried
out: "But which, Alice? There are two of them."

"Two?" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes; Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne. You can't give me up to both of
them."

"Both?" she repeated again. She could not condescend to specify; it
would be ridiculous, and as it was, she felt her dignity hopelessly
shaken. The tears came into her eyes.

"Yes. And neither of them wants me--they haven't got any use for me.
Mrs. Frobisher is married already, and Miss Wrayne took the trouble last
night