rraine's
jungle. There's a seat in it, and we can smell the ferns."

Charles Edward had been watering the garden, and everything was sweet.
Thousands of odors came out such as I never smelled before. And all
the time the moon was rising. After we had sat there awhile, talking a
little about college, about my trip abroad, I suddenly found I could not
go on. There were tears in my eyes. I felt as if so good a friend ought
to know how I had behaved--for I must have been very weak and silly to
make such a mistake. He ought to hear the worst about me. "Oh," I said,
"do you know what happened to me?"

He made a little movement toward me with both hands. Then he took them
back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice: "I know you are
going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you
played with when you were a child." But I cried, softly, though, because
it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry,
sorry for myself--and ashamed. Until now I'd never known how ashamed I
was. "Don't cry, child," he was saying. "For God's sake, don't cry!" I
think it came over me then, as it hadn't before, that all that part of
my life was spoiled. I'd been engaged and thought I liked somebody,
and now it was all over and done. "I don't know what I'm crying for," I
said, at last, when I could stop. "I suppose it's because I'm different
now, different from the other girls, different from myself. I can't ever
be happy any more."

He spoke, very quickly. "Is it because you liked Goward so much?"

"Like him!" I said. "Like Harry Goward? Why, I--" There I stopped,
because I couldn't think of any word small enough, and I think he
understood, for he laughed out quickly.

"Now," said he, "I'm a psychologist. You remember that, don't you? It
used to impress you a good deal."

"Oh," said I, "it does impress me. Nobody has ever seemed so wise as
you. Nobody!"

"Then it's understood that I'm a sage from the Orient. I know the
workings of the human mind. And I tell you a profound truth: that the
only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it. Now,
you're not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again. Not a
minute. Not an instant. Do you hear?" He sounded quite stern, and I
answered as if I had been in class.

"Yes, sir."

"You are to think of Italy, and how blue the sea is--and Germany, and
how good the beer is--and Charlie Ned and Lorraine, and what trumps they
are. Do you