'm sorry I had to. I've been very wretched for
several days."

It was the first encouragement she had given him. There was no coquetry
about her aloofness. It was only that her faith in him had had a shock
and was slow of reviving.

"You are very, very lovely, Sidney. I wonder if you have any idea what
you mean to me?"

"You meant a great deal to me, too," she said frankly, "until a few days
ago. I thought you were the greatest man I had ever known, and the best.
And then--I think I'd better tell you what I overheard. I didn't try to
hear. It just happened that way."

He listened doggedly to her account of the hospital gossip, doggedly and
with a sinking sense of fear, not of the talk, but of Carlotta herself.
Usually one might count on the woman's silence, her instinct for
self-protection. But Carlotta was different. Damn the girl, anyhow! She
had known from the start that the affair was a temporary one; he had
never pretended anything else.

There was silence for a moment after Sidney finished. Then:

"You are not a child any longer, Sidney. You have learned a great deal
in this last year. One of the things you know is that almost every man
has small affairs, many of them sometimes, before he finds the woman
he wants to marry. When he finds her, the others are all off--there's
nothing to them. It's the real thing then, instead of the sham."

"Palmer was very much in love with Christine, and yet--"

"Palmer is a cad."

"I don't want you to think I'm making terms. I'm not. But if this thing
went on, and I found out afterward that you--that there was anyone else,
it would kill me."

"Then you care, after all!"

There was something boyish in his triumph, in the very gesture with
which he held out his arms, like a child who has escaped a whipping. He
stood up and, catching her hands, drew her to her feet. "You love me,
dear."

"I'm afraid I do, Max."

"Then I'm yours, and only yours, if you want me," he said, and took her
in his arms.

He was riotously happy, must hold her off for the joy of drawing her to
him again, must pull off her gloves and kiss her soft bare palms.

"I love you, love you!" he cried, and bent down to bury his face in the
warm hollow of her neck.

Sidney glowed under his caresses--was rather startled at his passion, a
little ashamed.

"Tell me you love me a little bit. Say it."

"I love you," said Sidney, and flushed scarlet.

But even in his arms, with the warm sunlight on hi