t, "my fondness for you will
probably never demand any very extravagant expression."

"No, but mine may," was his daring reply; "therefore, perhaps, as a
measure of self-defence, you ought to break with me at once. Make a
scene of some sort, revile me; do anything you choose, only so that
the eavesdroppers, who are sure to misunderstand everything except
vehemence, get a notion that we have been engaged, but are so no
more."

Miss Jones, who had seated herself in the sofa-corner, leaned her head
in her hand and meditated.

"Do you know," she said, raising the same pretty head abruptly, "your
proposition is a very original one? I wonder if a girl was ever before
requested to break with a man to whom she had never been engaged.
However, Mr. Grover, I am not quite as accommodating as you think. On
the whole it suits my purpose very well to be engaged. I have come
here for study and have no desire to be courted by students or
musicians, of whom there is said to be quite a colony here."

It was now Grover's turn to be amazed. He stared at the sweetly demure
and sensible little face in bewilderment.

"Then you mean to--you mean to say----" he stammered.

"Yes, I mean to say," she finished, suppressing the little mischievous
gleam in her eye, "that I prefer not to break with you. We will remain
engaged."

The young man's countenance fell. He began to look unhappy; perhaps
Miss Jones was an unscrupulous adventuress who would turn the joke
into earnest and sue him for breach of promise after they got home.
To be sure, she looked as innocent as an angel, but it is a notorious
fact that women are just the most dangerous in that guise. In escaping
Scylla he had plunged headlong into Charybdis. He got up with a
painful sense of indecision, walked toward the window, and concluded,
after a moment's thought, that he could not, as a man of honor,
withdraw from a bargain which he had himself proposed. It would be
wiser to abide by it, and to trust to his own ingenuity to extricate
him at the proper moment.

"Miss Jones," he said, rather ceremoniously, "I thank you for your
kindness."

"Not at all," she retorted, carelessly; "it is an arrangement for
mutual convenience. But remember," she added, lifting her index finger
in playful threat, "that we are extremely well-bred and
undemonstrative."

III.

The goddesses found it a harder task than they had anticipated to hate
Miss Jones. Scarcely twenty