get--only I can't--that we had
been friends for a short time. And though I never blamed you--it was
natural enough--it hit me pretty hard--so hard that I didn't feel
anxious to repeat the experience."

"Did it hit you hard?" said Sylvia, softly. "Perhaps I minded too, just
a very little. However," she added, with a sudden smile, that made two
enchanting dimples in her cheeks, "it only shows how much more sensible
it is to have things out. _Now_ perhaps you won't persist in keeping
away from us?"

"I believe," said Horace, gloomily, still determined not to let any
direct avowal pass his lips, "it would be best that I _should_ keep
away."

Her half-closed eyes shone through their long lashes; the violets on her
breast rose and fell. "I don't think I understand," she said, in a tone
that was both hurt and offended.

There is a pleasure in yielding to some temptations that more than
compensates for the pain of any previous resistance. Come what might, he
was not going to be misunderstood any longer.

"If I must tell you," he said, "I've fallen desperately, hopelessly, in
love with you. Now you know the reason."

"It doesn't seem a very good reason for wanting to go away and never see
me again. _Does_ it?"

"Not when I've no right to speak to you of love?"

"But you've done that!"

"I know," he said penitently; "I couldn't help it. But I never meant to.
It slipped out. I quite understand how hopeless it is."

"Of course, if you are so sure as all that, you are quite right not to
try."

"Sylvia! You can't mean that--that you do care, after all?"

"Didn't you really see?" she said, with a low, happy laugh. "How stupid
of you! And how dear!"

He caught her hand, which she allowed to rest contentedly in his. "Oh,
Sylvia! Then you do--you do! But, my God, what a selfish brute I am! For
we can't marry. It may be years before I can ask you to come to me. You
father and mother wouldn't hear of your being engaged to me."

"_Need_ they hear of it just yet, Horace?"

"Yes, they must. I should feel a cur if I didn't tell your mother, at
all events."

"Then you shan't feel a cur, for we'll go and tell her together." And
Sylvia rose and went into the farther room, and put her arms round her
mother's neck. "Mother darling," she said, in a half whisper, "it's
really all your fault for writing such very long letters, but--but--we
don't exactly know how we came to do it--but Horace and I have got
engaged somehow. You are