n'--as you proposed yesterday."

"No--anything in reason or out of it. I'm getting desperate!" He laughed
again, but in his laughter there was a little note of something new to
the young girl, a sort of understreak of earnestness.

"It isn't anything you can change," said Clare, after a moment's
hesitation. "And it certainly has nothing to do with your appearance, or
your manners, or your tailor," she added.

"Oh well, then, it's evidently something I've done, or said," Brook
murmured, looking at her.

But she did not return his glance, as they walked side by side; indeed,
she turned her face from him a little, and she said nothing, for she was
far too truthful to deny his assertion.

"Then I'm right," he said, with an interrogation, after a long pause.

"Don't ask me, please! It's of no importance after all. Talk of
something else."

"I don't agree with you," Brook answered. "It is very important to me."

"Oh, nonsense!" Clare tried to laugh. "What difference can it make to
you, whether I like you or not?"

"Don't say that. It makes a great difference--more than I thought it
could, in fact. One--one doesn't like to be misjudged by one's friends,
you know."

"But I'm not your friend."

"I want you to be."

"I can't."

"You won't," said Brook, in a lower tone, and almost angrily. "You've
made up your mind against me, on account of something you've guessed
at, and you won't tell me what it is, so I can't possibly defend myself.
I haven't the least idea what it can be. I never did anything
particularly bad, I believe, and I never did anything I should be
ashamed of owning. I don't like to say that sort of thing, you know,
about myself, but you drive me to it. It isn't fair. Upon my word, it's
not fair play. You tell a man he's a bad lot, like that, in the air, and
then you refuse to say why you think so. Or else the whole thing is a
sort of joke you've invented--if it is, it's awfully one-sided, it seems
to me."

"Do you really think me capable of anything so silly?" asked Clare.

"No, I don't. That makes it all the worse, because it proves that you
have--or think you have--something against me. I don't know much about
law, but it strikes me as something tremendously like libel. Don't you
think so yourself?"

"Oh no! Indeed I don't. Libel means saying things against people,
doesn't it? I haven't done that--"

"Indeed you have! I mean, I beg your pardon for contradicting you like
that--"

"Rather fl