I was sick, and now I'm cured--"

"You mean--" Penny faltered, but with a swift, imploring glance toward
Dundee, "--you don't love Nita any more? You can't deny you were
terribly in love with her, Ralph. Lois told us--told _me_ last night
that Nita had told her in strictest confidence that she had promised to
marry you, just Thursday night--"

The boy's face was very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's
shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to
spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld
from him the vital fact of Nita's engagement to Ralph Hammond....

"That's true, Penny," Ralph was saying dully. "You have a right to know,
because I'm asking _you_ to marry me now.... I did propose to Nita again
Thursday night, and she did accept me. I confess now I was wild with
happiness--"

"Why did she refuse you before?" Penny cut in, and Dundee silently
thanked her for asking the question he would have liked to ask himself.
"Was it because she wasn't sure she was in love with you?"

"You're making it awfully hard for me, honey," the boy protested,
then admitted humbly, "Of course you want to know, and you should
know.... No, she said all along, almost from the first that she loved
me more than I could love her, but that there were--reasons.... _Two
reasons_, she always said, and once I asked her jealously if they were
both men, but she looked so startled and then laughed so queerly that I
didn't ask again.... Then I thought it might be because I was younger
than she was, though I can't believe she is more than twenty-three or so,
and I'm twenty-five, you know. And once I got cold-sick because I thought
she might still be married, but she said her husband was married again,
and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him--"

"But she _did_ accept you Thursday night?" Penny persisted.

"Yes," the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully
hard, honey, but I'll tell you once for all and get it over with.... I
took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick
of Hamilton. When we were driving back she suddenly became very
queer--reckless, defiant.... And she asked me if I still wanted to marry
her, and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said
she'd marry me June first, but she added--" and the boy, to Dundee's
watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have
sounded so odd at the