rybody now and then, and be with
just you. I mean--" Certainly I had not meant to say what I had
said, and, provoked at my thoughtless revealing, at the chance it
would give Selwyn to say what I did not want him to say, I stopped
abruptly, then quickly spoke again. "Why don't you make the horse go
faster? We'll never get to Signal Hill at this rate. He's crawling."

"What difference does it make whether we get anywhere or not? I
don't want to get anywhere. To be going with you is enough. You are
a cruel person, Danny, or you would not make me go so long a way
alone."

"I am not making you go alone. It is you who are making me. I am
much more alone than you." Again I stopped and stared ahead. What
was the matter with me that I should be saying things I must not say?
In the silence of earth and air I wondered if Selwyn could hear the
quick, thick beating of my heart.

On the winding road no one was in sight, and from our elevation a
view of the tiny town below could be glimpsed through the bare
branches of the trees of the little mountain we were ascending; and
about us was no sound save the crunch of the buggy-wheels on the
gravel road, and the tread of the slow-moving horse. It was a new
world we were in--a kindly, simple, strifeless world of peace and
plenty, and calm and content, and the crowded quarters close to
Scarborough Square, with their poignant problems of sin and
suffering, of scant beauty and weary joy, seemed a life apart and
very far away. And the world of the Avenue, the world of handsome
homes and deadening luxuries, of social exactions and selfish
indulgence, of much waste and unused power, seemed also far away, and
just Selwyn and I were together in a little world of our own.

"We might as well have this out, Danny." An arm on the back of the
buggy, Selwyn looked at me, and in his eyes was that which made me
understand he was right. We might as well have it out. "For three
years you have refused to marry me, and now you say you are more
alone than I. We've been beating the air, been evading something;
refusing to face the thing that is keeping us apart. What is it?
You know my love for you. But yours for me-- You have never told me
that you loved me. Look at me, Danny." He turned my face toward
him. "Tell me. Is it because you do not love me that you will not
marry me?"

"No." A bird on a bough ahead of us piped to another across the
road, and as mate to mate was answer