ou."

"I don't know. I suppose that is a stupid answer. But it is, if I am to
be honest, and I am trying very hard to be honest--with you and with
myself--the only one I have. I am happy just as I am. I like you and
Mr. Cressler and Mr. Corthell--everybody. But, Mr. Jadwin"--she looked
him full in the face, her dark eyes full of gravity--"with a woman it
is so serious--to be married. More so than any man ever understood.
And, oh, one must be so sure, so sure. And I am not sure now. I am not
sure now. Even if I were sure of you, I could not say I was sure of
myself. Now and then I tell myself, and even poor, dear Aunt Wess',
that I shall never love anybody, that I shall never marry. But I should
be bitterly sorry if I thought that was true. It is one of the greatest
happinesses to which I look forward, that some day I shall love some
one with all my heart and soul, and shall be a true wife, and find my
husband's love for me the sweetest thing in my life. But I am sure that
that day has not come yet."

"And when it does come," he urged, "may I be the first to know?"

She smiled a little gravely.

"Ah," she answered, "I would not know myself that that day had come
until I woke to the fact that I loved the man who had asked me to be
his wife, and then it might be too late--for you."

"But now, at least," he persisted, "you love no one."

"Now," she repeated, "I love--no one."

"And I may take such encouragement in that as I can?"

And then, suddenly, capriciously even, Laura, an inexplicable spirit of
inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the one
who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of
marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her head on
one side, looking at the rose leaf between her fingers. In a low voice
she said at last:

"If you like."

But before Jadwin could reply, Cressler and Aunt Wess' who had been
telling each other of their "experiences," of their "premonitions," of
the unaccountable things that had happened to them, at length included
the others in their conversation.

"J.," remarked Cressler, "did anything funny ever happen to
you--warnings, presentiments, that sort of thing? Mrs. Wessels and I
have been talking spiritualism. Laura, have you ever had any
'experiences'?"

She shook her head.

"No, no. I am too material, I am afraid."

"How about you, 'J.'?"

"Nothing much, except that I believe in 'luck'--a little. The other d