ng me up in double harness to a clothes-horse,
I wouldn't let him!"

"But if I want--"

"There isn't anything you want that I can't get you. If you like this
sort of thing, you shall have it. And don't run away with the
idea that I'm not strong for society myself--the right sort."

Her gesture was hopeless. "What can I say to you?"

He suggested quietly, not without humour: "If you don't mind, say
yes."

"You don't know what you're doing, making me such an offer. Suppose I
married you for your money . . ."

"You won't do that. You can't."

"What do you mean?"

"You've got to love me first. And you're too fine and honest to
pretend that for the sake of my money."

Of a sudden his tone changed. "Oh, forgive me!" he pleaded. "I was a
fool to ask. I might have known--I did know you didn't care for me.
Only, I hoped, and I guess a man in love can't help letting his hopes
make him foolish, especially when he sees the girl in trouble of some
sort, needing what he can give her, love and protection--and when it's
moonlight and there's music in the air!"

He checked himself with a lifted hand and stood for a moment, half
smiling, as if made suddenly conscious of the pulsing rapture of those
remote violins.

"_That's_ what's made all the mischief," he complained: "that,
and the way you look. It isn't a fair combination to work on a fellow,
you know. Please don't say anything; you've said enough. I know very
well what you mean, but I'd rather not hear it in one word of two
letters--not to-night. I'm just foolish enough to prefer to go on
hoping for a while, believing there was a bare chance I had
misunderstood you."

He laughed half-heartedly, said "Good night" with an admirable air of
accepting his dismissal as a matter of course, and marched off as
abruptly as if reminded of an overdue appointment.

No other manoeuvre could have been more shrewdly calculated to advance
his cause; nothing makes so compelling an appeal to feminine
sympathies as a rejected suitor taking his punishment like a man; the
emotional affinity of pity has been established ever since the
invention of love.

Sally sank down mechanically upon a little marble seat near the spot
where they had stood talking and stared without conscious vision out
over the silvered sea.

Her thoughts were vastly unconcerned with the mysterious behaviour of
Mrs. Standish and her brother, the inexplicable insolence of Mercedes
Pride, the shattered bubble of he