u don't, I'll begin all over again by
telling you that you are the sweetest--"

"Hush!" she said softly, turning round abruptly with a gesture of
protest, looking up into his face, and then down at the ground to
conceal her confusion. "I think we understand one another," she said at
length, and raising her eyes to his again, she held out both her hands
which he seized and held in his own.

"Let us be friends again," she continued, gently withdrawing her hands
from his.

"No, don't say that!" he interrupted. "We can't be that! Let it rest as
it is!"

XXIV

"When you love, you love," runs a gypsy proverb.

Bessie wore the despairing look of one who clings to a last vain hope.
How had it happened? Why had everything gone contrary to her
expectations? Why was Mr. Yankton dragging her at the wheels of his
chariot instead of she him? According to her social standards he had
seen but little, and yet he had the _savoir faire_ of a man of the
world. Her preconceived ideas on certain subjects were so upset that she
no longer appeared to have a hold on anything; the very ground seemed to
be slipping away beneath her.

Strange that one could care for the person whom one least expected to,
that the most humiliating moment in one's life might be the happiest as
well. If any one had suggested such a possibility to her six months
previously, she would have laughed at the mere thought. How could she
relinquish the life she knew for his? She fought against his influence
with all her powers of resistance. And yet, what woman in her right mind
would hesitate to follow the man of her choice to the sunlit valleys of
our dreams? Weaker women than she had done so and been happy, while
stronger ones had hesitated, as was the case with Blanch, and lived to
regret it. She secretly prayed that she might be spared the torture
which Blanch was suffering and the despair which must inevitably
overtake her should she fail to win back the man she had let slip from
her; for what, after all, could life be to one without the true
comradeship of love? She began to feel and realize the ineffable
sweetness of life's fullness as the days of her awakening continued,
while the ache at her heart told her plainly enough that the decisive
moment of her life had arrived--that she must choose between happiness
and ambition. The one, rich and full though accompanied perhaps by pain
and even denial at times; the other fraught with uncertainty.

She u