"I DO believe what you say, Mr. Rosedale," she said quietly; "and I am
ready to marry you whenever you wish."

Rosedale, reddening to the roots of his glossy hair, received this
announcement with a recoil which carried him to his feet, where he halted
before her in an attitude of almost comic discomfiture.

"For I suppose that is what you do wish," she continued, in the same
quiet tone. "And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in
this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust
my happiness to your hands."

She spoke with the noble directness which she could command on such
occasions, and which was like a large steady light thrown across the
tortuous darkness of the situation. In its inconvenient brightness
Rosedale seemed to waver a moment, as though conscious that every avenue
of escape was unpleasantly illuminated.

Then he gave a short laugh, and drew out a gold cigarette-case, in which,
with plump jewelled fingers, he groped for a gold-tipped cigarette.
Selecting one, he paused to contemplate it a moment before saying: "My
dear Miss Lily, I'm sorry if there's been any little misapprehension
between us-but you made me feel my suit was so hopeless that I had really
no intention of renewing it."

Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked
the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: "I
have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my
decision was final."

Her word-play was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in
puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest
inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I
want at least to thank you for having once thought of me as you did."

The touch of her hand, the moving softness of her look, thrilled a
vulnerable fibre in Rosedale. It was her exquisite inaccessibleness, the
sense of distance she could convey without a hint of disdain, that made
it most difficult for him to give her up.

"Why do you talk of saying goodbye? Ain't we going to be good friends all
the same?" he urged, without releasing her hand.

She drew it away quietly. "What is your idea of being good friends?" she
returned with a slight smile. "Making love to me without asking me to
marry you?" Rosedale laughed with a recovered sense of ease.

"Well, that's about the size of it, I suppose. I can't help making love
to you--I don