artled face that he asked her the
matter.

"Nothing," she said slowly, "only this: five men have said that to me
before, and it frightens me."

"Oh, Clara, is that your fate!"

She did not answer.

"I suppose love to you is--" he began.

She turned like a flash.

"I have never been in love."

They walked along, and he realized slowly how much she had told him...
never in love.... She seemed suddenly a daughter of light alone. His
entity dropped out of her plane and he longed only to touch her dress
with almost the realization that Joseph must have had of Mary's eternal
significance. But quite mechanically he heard himself saying:

"And I love you--any latent greatness that I've got is... oh, I can't
talk, but Clara, if I come back in two years in a position to marry
you--"

She shook her head.

"No," she said; "I'd never marry again. I've got my two children and I
want myself for them. I like you--I like all clever men, you more than
any--but you know me well enough to know that I'd never marry a clever
man--" She broke off suddenly.

"Amory."

"What?"

"You're not in love with me. You never wanted to marry me, did you?"

"It was the twilight," he said wonderingly. "I didn't feel as though I
were speaking aloud. But I love you--or adore you--or worship you--"

"There you go--running through your catalogue of emotions in five
seconds."

He smiled unwillingly.

"Don't make me out such a light-weight, Clara; you _are_ depressing
sometimes."

"You're not a light-weight, of all things," she said intently, taking
his arm and opening wide her eyes--he could see their kindliness in the
fading dusk. "A light-weight is an eternal nay."

"There's so much spring in the air--there's so much lazy sweetness in
your heart."

She dropped his arm.

"You're all fine now, and I feel glorious. Give me a cigarette. You've
never seen me smoke, have you? Well, I do, about once a month."

And then that wonderful girl and Amory raced to the corner like two mad
children gone wild with pale-blue twilight.

"I'm going to the country for to-morrow," she announced, as she stood
panting, safe beyond the flare of the corner lamp-post. "These days are
too magnificent to miss, though perhaps I feel them more in the city."

"Oh, Clara!" Amory said; "what a devil you could have been if the Lord
had just bent your soul a little the other way!"

"Maybe," she answered; "but I think not. I'm never really wild and never
have