ely knew what she was doing at the
moment."

"Then, do you think--do you suppose--it would be any good my trying to
see her again? If she wouldn't be indifferent to my feelings, do you
think there would be any hope--Really, you know, I would give anything
to believe that my feelings wouldn't offend her. You understand me?"

"Perhaps I do."

"I've never met a more charming girl and--she isn't engaged, is she? She
isn't engaged to you? I don't mean to press the question, but it's a
question of life and death with me, you know."

Lanfear thought he saw his way out of the coil. "I can tell you, quite
as frankly as you ask, that Miss Gerald isn't engaged to _me_."

"Then it's somebody else--somebody in America! Well, I hope she'll be
happy; _I_ never shall." He offered his hand to Lanfear. "I'm off."

"Oh, here's the doctor, now," a voice said behind them where they stood
by the garden wall, and they turned to confront Gerald with his
daughter.

"Why! Are you going?" she said to the Englishman, and she put out her
hand to him.

"Yes, Mr. Evers is going." Lanfear came to the rescue.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the girl said, and the youth responded.

"That's very good of you. I--good-by! I hope you'll be very happy--I--"
He turned abruptly away, and ran into the hotel.

"What has he been crying for?" Miss Gerald asked, turning from a long
look after him.

Lanfear did not know quite what to say; but he hazarded saying: "He was
hurt that you had forgotten him when he came to see you this afternoon."

"Did he come to see me?" she asked; and Lanfear exchanged looks of
anxiety, pain, and reassurance with her father. "I am so sorry. Shall I
go after him and tell him?"

"No; I explained; he's all right," Lanfear said.

"You want to be careful, Nannie," her father added, "about people's
feelings when you meet them, and afterwards seem not to know them."

"But I _do_ know them, papa," she remonstrated.

"You want to be careful," her father repeated.

"I will--I will, indeed." Her lips quivered, and the tears came, which
Lanfear had to keep from flowing by what quick turn he could give to
something else.

An obscure sense of the painful incident must have lingered with her
after its memory had perished. One afternoon when Lanfear and her father
went with her to the military concert in the sycamore-planted piazza
near the Vacherie Suisse, where they often came for a cup of tea, she
startled them by bowing gayly to a young