rry him I
discovered I was that girl, with the same untainted ideal of marriage,
too, hidden away safe and sound under my play-acting.

"Why, Breck!" I exclaimed. "Don't be absurd. I wouldn't _marry_ you for
anything in the world."

And I wouldn't! My marriage was dim and indistinct to me then. I had
placed it in a very faraway future. My ideal of love was such, that
beside it all my friends' love affairs and many of those in fiction
seemed commonplace and mediocre. I prized highly the distinction of
Breckenridge Sewall's attentions, but marry him--of course I wouldn't!

Breck's attentions continued spasmodically for over two years. It took
some skill to be seen with him frequently, to accept just the right
portion of his tokens of regard, to keep him interested, and yet remain
absolutely free and uninvolved. I couldn't manage it indefinitely; the
time would come when all the finesse in the world would avail nothing.
And come it did in the middle of the third summer.

Breck refused to be cool and temperate that third summer. He insisted on
all sorts of extravagances. He allowed me to monopolize him to the
exclusion of every one else. He wouldn't be civil even to his mother's
guests at Grassmere. He deserted them night after night for Edith's
sunken garden, and me, though I begged him to be reasonable, urging him
to stay away. I didn't blame his mother, midsummer though it was, for
closing Grassmere, barring the windows, locking the gates and abruptly
packing off with her son to an old English estate of theirs near
London. I only hoped Mrs. Sewall didn't think me heartless. I had always
been perfectly honest with Breck. I had always, from the first, said I
couldn't marry him.

Not until I was convinced that the end must come between Breck and me,
did I tell the family that he had ever proposed marriage. There exists,
I believe, some sort of unwritten law that once a man proposes and a
girl refuses, attentions should cease. I came in on Sunday afternoon
from an automobile ride with Breck just before he sailed for England and
dramatically announced his proposal to the family--just as if he hadn't
been urging the same thing ever since I knew him.

I expected Edith would be displeased when she learned that I wasn't
going to marry Breck, so I didn't tell her my decision immediately. I
dreaded to undertake to explain to her what a slaughter to my ideals
such a marriage would be. Oh, I was young then, you see, young and