etly.

His tone and attitude did not change. "Will you marry me?"

Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white.
She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous
in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with
strangeness in the long silence--the two were so strange to each other.
At last she said:

"What made you say that?"

He did not answer.

"Bibbs, look at me!" Her voice was loud and clear. "What made you say
that? Look at me!"

He could not look at her, and he could not speak.

"What was it that made you?" she said. "I want you to tell me."

She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
intensity of wonder. "You've given up--to your father," she said,
slowly, "and then you came to ask me--" She broke off. "Bibbs, do you
want me to marry you?"

"Yes," he said, just audibly.

"No!" she cried. "You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it
that's happened?"

"Nothing."

"Wait," she said. "Let me think. It's something that happened since our
walk this morning--yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened
that--" She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and
dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New
House.

Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, "I do--I do want you
to--marry me, if--if--you could."

She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. "Bibbs, do you--" Her
voice was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper. "Do you think
I'm--in love with you?"

"No," he said.

Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it
did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it.
"Why?"

"I've had nothing but dreams," Bibbs said, desolately, "but they weren't
like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me." He smiled faintly,
though still he did not look at Mary. "And when I first came home Edith
told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She
meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed
either of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as--well, not as
particularly captivating!"

Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. "Those two!" she
exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: "Lamhorn!
That's like them!" She turned away, went to the bare little black
mantel