rstand, it was
on the afternoon when you first met--"

"The afternoon when I came over to call? I remember nothing whatever
about that afternoon except that I saw you, for the first time, and that
you were unkind to me, and wouldn't speak."

The blush on Rowena's cheeks flamed up again more rosily than before.

"Don't speak of it, please! It makes me hot and so furious with Maud
even now. You are not a girl, so you can't understand; but I was so
wretchedly embarrassed, and angry, and ashamed."

"But why? That's what I could not understand! You had been sweet
enough, and unselfish enough, and hospitable enough to go to the trouble
of putting on a pretty frock--I adore that blue frock--for the benefit
of a casual stranger whom you had never even seen. Why should you be
ashamed of that? I think it was jolly unselfish. It's such a fag
changing one's kit. You ought to have been very complacent and pleased.
You _would_ have been if you could have changed places with me for a
minute, and seen yourself walking into the room. If you knew what I
thought--"

He paused, and Rowena, scenting danger, resolved that nothing on earth
would make her put the obvious question. The resolution lasted for a
whole half-minute, at the end of which time a feeble little voice
demanded softly:

"Wh-at did you think?"

"I thought--oh, Rowena! so many, many things! I thought that I had
dreamt of you all my life, and had found you at last. I thought you
were the loveliest thing in the whole wide world. I wished I had been a
better man for your sake! I was so happy to have met you, and so
miserable because you were cross. It was such a bad beginning that I
was afraid you would always be prejudiced--always dislike me."

Again he paused, and Rowena bent over her horse's head, stroking its
mane, keeping her eyes persistently downcast. They traversed another
hundred yards before the low, insistent tones again struck on her ear.

"_Do_ you, Rowena?"

"Do I--what?"

"Dislike me still?"

"I? Oh, what a question! I never disliked you. I was angry with Maud,
and with myself--not with you at all."

"But I want so much more. Don't you know that, Rowena? I tumbled
headlong in love with you that very afternoon, and I've gone on tumbling
deeper and deeper ever since. Do you care for me a little bit, Rowena?
_Could_ you care? I'm such a stupid, ordinary sort of fellow. I don't
know how I dare ask such a thing of a girl like