he plan I made,
to save my parents' feelings--and yours. I thought that, when we'd had
the interview I asked you to give me, we could manage to quarrel, or
discover that we didn't like each other as well as before. We could
break off our engagement, and Father and Mother need never know--how it
began."

"A very generous idea of yours!" I cried, the blood so hot in my cheeks
that it forced tears to my eyes. "It had occurred to me, too, that for
_their_ sakes we might manage that way. Thank you, Mr. Beckett, for
sparing me the pain--I deserve. I couldn't have dared hope for such a
happy solution----"

"Couldn't you?"

"No. I----"

"Well, I'm hoping for an even happier one--a lot happier. But of course
it depends on what you say to Mr. O'Farrell's--accusation."

"He--made an accusation?"

"Listen, and tell me what you'd call it. He said you told him at Amiens,
when he asked you to marry him, that--_you loved me_."

"Oh!"

"Is it true?"

"Yes, I did tell him that----"

"I mean, is it true that you've loved me?"

"Mr. Beckett, after all, you are cruel! You're punishing me very hard."

"I don't wish to 'punish you hard'--or at all. Why am I 'cruel,' simply
asking if it's true that you've loved me? Of course, when Mother told
you of my fever, and what I'd said of this cathedral picture, she told
you that I was dead in love with 'the Girl,' as I called you, and just
about crazy because I'd lost her. Why shouldn't you have loved me a
little bit--say, the hundredth part as much as I loved you? I'm not a
monster, am I? And we both had exactly the same length of time to fall
in love--whole hours on end. Cruel or not cruel, I've got to know. Was
it the truth you told the O'Farrell man?"

I could not speak. I didn't try to speak. I looked up at him. It must
have been some such look as the Princess gave St. George when he
appeared at the last minute, to rescue her from the dragon. The tears
I'd been holding back splashed over my cheeks. Jim gave a low cry of
pity--or love (it sounded like love) as he saw them; and the next thing,
he was kissing them away. I was in his arms so closely held that my
breath was crushed out of my lungs. I wanted to sob. But how can you sob
without breath? I could only let him kiss me on cheeks, and eyes, and
mouth, and kiss him back again, with eager haste, lest I should wake up
to find he had loved me for a fleeting instant, in a divine dream.

When he let me breathe for a second, I gas