r memories! What dreadful thing would you forget now,
if you could? Confess."

"I would blot out the recollection that you went boat-riding with Will
Taylor last Wednesday afternoon, and what I've felt about it ever since."

"Dear me, Mr. Henry Burr," said Madeline, with an air of excessive
disdain, "how long is it since I authorized you to concern yourself with
my affairs? If it wouldn't please you too much, I'd certainly box your
ears.

"I think you're rather unreasonable," he protested, in a hurt tone. "You
said a minute ago that you wouldn't permit me to be jealous of you, and
just because I'm so anxious to obey you that I want to forget that I ever
was, you are vexed."

A small noise, expressive of scorn, and not to be represented by letters
of the alphabet, was all the reply she deigned to this more ingenious
than ingenuous plea.

"I've made my confession, and it's only fair you should make yours," he
said next. "What remorseful deed have you done that you'd like to
forget?"

"You needn't speak in that babying tone. I fancy I could commit sins as
well as you, with all your big moustache, if I wanted to. I don't believe
you'd hurt a fly, although you do look so like a pirate. You've probably
got a goody little conscience, so white and soft that you'd die of shame
to have people see it."

"Excuse me, Lady Macbeth," he said, laughing; "I don't wish to underrate
your powers of depravity, but which of your soul-destroying sins would
you prefer to forget, if indeed any of them are shocking enough to
trouble your excessively hardened conscience?

"Well, I must admit," said Madeline, seriously, "that I wouldn't care to
forget anything I've done, not even my faults and follies. I should be
afraid if they were taken away that I shouldn't have any character left."

"Don't put it on that ground," said Henry, "it's sheer vanity that makes
you say so. You know your faults are just big enough to be beauty-spots,
and that's why you'd rather keep 'em."

She reflected a moment, and then said, decisively--

"That's a compliment. I don't believe I like 'em from you. Don't make me
any more."

Perhaps she did not take the trouble to analyse the sentiment that
prompted her words. Had she done so, she would doubtless have found it in
a consciousness when in his presence of being surrounded with so fine and
delicate an atmosphere of unspoken devotion that words of flattery sounded
almost gross.

They paused before a gate.