capacity. . . . She was difficult to
teach--very, very difficult to govern. . . . I am afraid I did not do my
best with her."

"Why did you leave her to come here?" he asked.

She made no reply.

"Where is she now?"

She looked out into the cinders of the West, making no answer.

He gazed at her in silence for a long time; then:

"Is she really lame?"

"Yes."

"Very?"

"It is hip disease."

"But--but that can be cured!" he exclaimed. "It is now perfectly curable.
Why doesn't she go to Vienna or to New York----"

"She is going."

"She ought to lose no time!"

"She is going. She only learned the nature of her trouble very recently."

"You mean she has been lame all this time and didn't know what threatened
her?"

"She was--too busy to ask. Finally, because she did not get well, she
called in a physician. But she is a very determined girl; she refused to
believe what the physician told her--until--very recently----"

"See here," he said, "are you in constant communication with her?"

"Constant."

"Then tell her you know me. Tell her how terribly sorry I am. Tell--tell
her that I'll do anything to--to--tell her," he burst out excitedly,
"that I'll eat her plum cake if that will do her any good--or amuse
her--or anything! Tell her to bake it and frost it and fill it full of
glue, for all I care--and express it to you; and I'll eat every crumb of
that silly speech I made----"

"Wait!" she exclaimed. "Do you realise what you're saying? Do you realise
what you're offering to do for a girl--a lame girl--who is already in
love with you?"

His youthful face fell.

"By gad," he said, "do you think I ought to marry her? How on earth can I
when I'm--I'm dead in love with--somebody myself?"

"You--in love?" she said faintly.

He gazed across the brook at the darkening foliage.

"Oh, yes," he said with a pleasant sort of hopelessness, "but I fancy she
cares for another man."

"W-why do you think so?"

"He comes to see her."

"Is that a reason?"

"She won't talk about him."

"When a woman won't talk about a man is it always because she cares for
him in _that_ way?"

"Isn't it?"

"No."

They had lifted their heads now, facing each other in the violet dusk.
Between them the scent of heliotrope grew sweeter. He said:

"I've been all kinds of a fool. For all I know women have as many rights
on earth as men have. All I wish is that the plucky girl who took that
hedge, banner in hand, were well