himself had scarcely yet analysed.

"Scott, dear," she said steadily, in spite of her softly burning cheeks,
"I will be quite honest with you if you wish. I do know what you've been
trying to say. I am conscious that you are no longer the boy I could pet
and love and caress without embarrassment to either of us. You are a
man, but try to remember that I am several years older----"

"Does that matter!" he burst out.

"Yes, dear, it does.... I care for you--and Geraldine--more than for
anybody in the world. I understand your loyalty to me, Scott, and I--I
love it. But don't confuse it with any serious sentiment."

"I do care seriously."

"You make me very happy. Care for me very, very seriously; I want you
to; I--I need it. But don't mistake the kind of affection that we have
for each other for anything deeper, will you?"

"Don't you want to care for me--that way?"

"Not _that_ way, Scott."

"Why?"

"I've told you. I am so much older----"

"_Couldn't_ you, all the same?"

She was trembling inwardly. She leaned against a white birch-tree and
passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished
hair.

"No, I couldn't," she whispered.

The boy walked to the edge of the brook. Past him hurried the sun-tipped
ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead,
big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of
amber against the bottom sands.

One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence,
waiting. And after a while he turned and came back to her:

"I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when--when--you
remember, don't you?"

She did not answer.

"I don't know how it happened," he said: "something about you did it. I
want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious.... I
haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests
me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something
else," he explained naively. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you
because I don't dare touch you--and I've never thought of--of kissing
you good-night as we used to before that night last spring.... You
remember that we didn't do it that night, don't you?"

Still no answer, and Kathleen's delicate, blue-veined hands were
clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly.

"That was the reason," he said. "I don't know how I've found courage to
tell you. I've often been afraid you would