stressed.

"Please let me go," she said.

He was not detaining her.

"Won't you?" she asked, pitifully.

"No, I won't," said William Sayre, suddenly invaded by an instinct that
he possessed authority in the matter. "We must talk this thing over."

"Oh, but there isn't any use--really, truly there isn't! Won't you
believe me?"

"No," he said as honestly as he could through the humming exaltation that
sang in him until, to himself, he sounded like a beehive.

There was a fallen log all over moss behind her.

"We ought to be seated to properly consider this matter," he said.

"I must not think of it! I must go instantly."

When they were seated, and he had nearly twisted his head off trying to
meet her downcast eyes, he resumed a normal and less parrot-like posture,
and folded his arms portentously.

"To begin," he said, "I came here fishing. I heard a stick crack----"

She looked up.

"_That_ was my fault. It was all my fault. I don't know how I ever came
to do it. I never did such a thing in my life. We merely heard that you
and Mr. Langdon were in the woods----"

"_Who_ heard?"

"We. Never mind the others. I'll say that _I_ heard you were here.
And--and I took my--my net and came to--to----"

"To what?"

"To--investigate."

"Investigate what? _Me_?"

"Y-yes. I can't explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously.
And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what--what
certain people wanted, even if you were the author of _Amourette_----"

[Illustration: "'To begin,' he said, 'I came here fishing.'"]

"_I_ was not what _you_ wanted?" he repeated, bewildered.

"I mean that--that you were not what--what _they_ required----"

"They? Who are _they_? And what, in Heaven's name, did 'they' require?"

"I don't want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knew
immediately that they didn't want _you_, because you are not up to the
University standard. And you won't understand that. I ought to have gone
quietly away. . . . I don't know why I didn't. I was so interested in
listening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem,
_Amourette_. . . . And two hours slipped by----"

"You stood there in the bushes looking at _me_ for two hours, _and_
listening to my poem--and _liking_ it?"

"Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any
apparent reason, I wanted you to see _me_ . . . without any apparent
reason . . . and so I stepped