coming. A dead silence lasted
for several blocks. Every block seemed to Arthur a mile long, as if he
were walking in a hasheesh dream. He felt that she was expecting him to
say something, to make some sort of response to her advances; but what
response, in Heaven's name, could he make! He really could not make
love. He had none to make; and had never dreamed of making any to Maud
Elliott, of all girls. Yet the idea of letting her suppose him such an
oaf as not to understand her, or not to appreciate the honor a lady's
preference did him, was intolerable. He could not leave it so.

Finally, with a vague idea of a compromise between the impossible
alternative of making love to her, which he could n't, and seeming an
insensible boor, which he wouldn't, he laid his disengaged hand upon
hers as it rested on his arm. It was his intention to apply to it a
gentle pressure, which, while committing him to nothing, might tend to
calm her feelings and by its vaguely reassuring influence help to stave
off a crisis for the remainder of their walk. He did not, however,
succeed in carrying out the scheme; for at the moment of contact her
hand eluded his, as quicksilver glides from the grasp. There was no hint
of coquettish hesitation in its withdrawal. She snatched it away as
if his touch had burned her; and although she did not at the same
time wholly relinquish his arm, that was doubtless to avoid making the
situation, on the street as they were, too awkward.

A moment before only concerned to evade her apparent advances, Arthur
found himself in the position of one under rebuke for offering an
unwarranted familiarity to a lady. There was no question that he had
utterly misconstrued her previous conduct. It was very strange that he
could have been such a fool; but he was quite too dazed to disentangle
the evidence just then, and there was no doubt about the fact.

"Pardon me," he stammered, too much overcome with confusion and chagrin
to be able to judge whether it would have been better to be silent.

The quickness with which the reply came showed that she had been on the
point of speaking herself.

"You need not ask my pardon," she said. Her tones quivered with
excitement and her utterance was low and swift. "I don't blame you in
the least, after the way I have talked to you to-night. But I did not
mean that you should think lightly of me. I have said nothing right,
nothing that I meant to. What I wanted to have you understand w