ders and collar, and held the coat
for him; he put it on obediently.

"Has Spearman been here to-day?" he asked, not looking at her.

"To see father?"

"No; to see you."

"No."

He seized her wrist. "Don't see him, when he comes!" he commanded.

"Uncle Benny!"

"Don't see him!" Corvet repeated. "He's asked you to marry him, hasn't
he?"

Connie could not refuse the answer. "Yes."

"And you?"

"Why--why, Uncle Benny, I haven't answered him yet."

"Then don't--don't; do you understand, Connie?"

She hesitated, frightened for him. "I'll--I'll tell you before I see
him, if you want me to, Uncle Benny," she granted.

"But if you shouldn't be able to tell me then, Connie; if you
shouldn't--want to then?" The humility of his look perplexed her; if
he had been any other man--any man except Uncle Benny--she would have
thought some shameful and terrifying threat hung over him; but he broke
off sharply. "I must go home," he said uncertainly. "I must go home;
then I'll come back. Connie, you won't give him an answer till I come
back, will you?"

"No." He got her promise, half frightened, half bewildered; then he
turned at once and went swiftly away from her.

She ran back to the door of her father's house. From there she saw him
reach the corner and turn west to go to Astor Street. He was walking
rapidly and did not hesitate.

The trite truism which relates the inability of human beings to know
the future, has a counterpart not so often mentioned: We do not always
know our own past until the future has made plain what has happened to
us. Constance Sherrill, at the close of this, the most important day
in her life, did not know at all that it had been important to her.
All she felt was a perplexed, but indefinite uneasiness about Uncle
Benny. How strangely he had acted! Her uneasiness increased when the
afternoon and evening passed without his coming back to see her as he
had promised, but she reflected he had not set any definite time when
she was to expect him. During the night her anxiety grew still
greater; and in the morning she called his house up on the telephone,
but the call was unanswered. An hour later, she called again; still
getting no result, she called her father at his office, and told him of
her anxiety about Uncle Benny, but without repeating what Uncle Benny
had said to her or the promise she had made to him. Her father made
light of her fears; Uncle Benny, he reminded her, of