you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is
particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman
before she offers him his conge?"

He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the
reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly
turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy,
had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a
hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?"

"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered.

"I don't suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as
you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend
that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not
offended now.... Because I could not be with you.... But I am tired of
it, and I thought it better that you should know it--after all these
years."

Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the
hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a
stinging flush deepened over her pretty face.

"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarrassment.

"N-no."

"Then may I take my departure?"

She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and
intense curiosity.

"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked.
"Because I haven't meant to."

He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly
smile fascinated her.

"You haven't intended to," he said. "It's all right, Rosalie----"

"But--have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me."

In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her;
slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the
innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What,
after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant
consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy
manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for
himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of
her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude?

She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life--that is, she had
neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the
curiosity and interest now stirring her.

"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the
painful colour rose to