o," she said under her breath, almost hurriedly; "this must
stop _now_!"

"Won't you--can't you--couldn't I----"

"No. No--no--no--Mr. Sayre."

He said: "I've simply got to see you again. I know what I'm
asking--saying--hoping--wishing--isn't usual--conventional--advisable,
b-b-but I can't help it."

Standing there facing him she slowly shook her head.

"There is no use," she said. "It is perfectly horrid of me to have come
back. I somehow was afraid--from the expression of your face
yesterday----"

"Afraid of what?"

She hesitated; then, lifting her grey eyes, fearlessly:

"Afraid that you might wish to see me again. . . . Because I felt the
same way."

"Do you mean," he cried, "that I--that you--that we--Oh, Lord! I'm not
eloquent, but every faltering, stuttering, stammering, fool of a word I
_do_ say means a million things----"

"Oh, I know it, Mr. Sayre. I know it. I have no business here; I _must_
not remain----"

"If you go, you know I'll do some absurd thing--like poking my head under
water and holding it there, or walking backward off that ledge. Do you
know--if you should suddenly go away now, and if that ended it----"

"Ended--what?"

"You know," he said.

She may have known, for she stood very still, with head lowered and
downcast eyes. As for Sayre, what common sense he possessed had gone. The
thrilling unreality of it all--the exquisite irrational, illogical
intoxication of the moment--her beauty--the mystery of her--and of the
still, sunlit woods, had made of them both, and the forest world around
them, an enchanted dream which he was living, every breath a rapture,
every heart-beat an excited summons from the occult.

"Mr. Sayre," she said, with an effort, "I shall not tell you my name; but
if you ever again should happen to think of me, think of my name as the
name of the girl in that poem which I heard you reciting yesterday."

"Amourette?"

"Yes. That was the name of the poem and of the girl. You may call me
Amourette--when you are thinking of me alone by yourself."

"Did you like that poem?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because--I wrote it."

"You!" She lost a little of her colour.

"Yes," he said, "I wrote it--Amourette."

"Then--then I had better go away as fast as I can," she murmured.

With an enraptured smile verging perilously upon the infatuated, if not
fatuous, he repeated her name aloud; and she looked at him out of soft
grey eyes that seemed at once fascinated and di