e with impudence and
obstinacy. I suppose you felt yourself backed up by your former
sweetheart, and thought you could just treat me like the dirt under your
feet."

He certainly had proved himself a good advocate in his own cause. The
case thus put succinctly and clearly before her appeared very black to
Elsa against herself. Ever ready for self-deprecation, she began to
think that indeed she had behaved in a very ugly, unwomanly and
aggressive manner, and her meekness cost her no effort now when she said
gently:

"I am sorry, Bela! I seem to have been all queer the whole of to-day. It
is a very upsetting time for any girl, you must remember. But Pater
Bonifacius said that if any sin lay on my conscience since my last
confession, I could always find him in church at seven o'clock to-morrow
morning, before our wedding Mass, so as to be quite clear of sin before
Holy Communion."

"That's all right, then," he said, with a hard laugh. "You had better
find him in church to-morrow morning, and tell him that you have been
wilful and perverse and disobedient. He'll give you absolution, no
doubt. So now you'd better go back to your dancing. Your many friends
will be pining for you."

"Won't you . . . won't you come back with me, Bela?" she pleaded.

"No. I won't. I have told your mother plainly enough that I wasn't
coming back. So why she should have sent you snivelling after me, I
can't think."

"I think that even if mother hadn't sent me I should have come
ultimately. I am not quite sure, but I think I should have come. I know
that I have done wrong, but we are all of us obstinate and mistaken at
times, aren't we, Bela? It is rather hard to be so severely punished,"
she added, with a wistful little sigh, "on the eve of one's wedding day
too, which should be one of the happiest days in a girl's life."

"Severely punished?" he sneered. "Bah! As if you wanted me over there.
You've got all your precious friends."

"But I do want you, Bela. All the time that you were not in the barn
this afternoon I . . . I felt lonesome."

"Then why didn't you send for your old sweetheart? He would have cheered
you up."

"Don't say that, Bela," she said earnestly, and once more her little
hand grasped his coat-sleeve; "you don't know how it hurts. I don't want
to think of Andor. I only want to think of you, and if you would try and
be a little patient, I am sure that we would understand one another
better very soon."

"I hope so,