no doubt I shall tease him constantly. It's good for
a man to be uncertain. If you could see Philip's face at the quarterly
return of his ring, you would understand the fun of it. You had better
have taken your boat."

"Possibly," said Henderson calmly. "But you are the only woman in the
world for me, and while you are free, as I now see my light, I remain
near you. You know the old adage."

"But I'm not 'free!'" cried Edith Carr. "I'm telling you I am not. This
night is my public acknowledgment that Phil and I are promised, as our
world has surmised since we were children. That promise is an actual
fact, because of what I just have told you. My little fits of temper
don't count with Phil. He's been reared on them. In fact, I often
invent one in a perfect calm to see him perform. He is the most amusing
spectacle. But, please, please, do understand that I love him, and
always shall, and that we shall be married."

"Just the same, I'll wait and see it an accomplished fact," said
Henderson. "And Edith, because I love you, with the sort of love it is
worth a woman's while to inspire, I want your happiness before my own.
So I am going to say this to you, for I never dreamed you were capable
of the feeling you have displayed for Phil. If you do love him, and have
loved him always, a disappointment would cut you deeper than you know.
Go careful from now on! Don't strain that patched engagement of yours
any further. I've known Philip all my life. I've known him through
boyhood, in college, and since. All men respect him. Where the rest
of us confess our sins, he stands clean. You can go to his arms with
nothing to forgive. Mark this thing! I have heard him say, 'Edith is my
slogan,' and I have seen him march home strong in the strength of his
love for you, in the face of temptations before which every other man of
us fell. Before the gods! that ought to be worth something to a girl, if
she really is the delicate, sensitive, refined thing she would have man
believe. It would take a woman with the organism of an ostrich to endure
some of the men here to-night, if she knew them as I do; but Phil is
sound to the core. So this is what I would say to you: first, your
instincts are right in loving him, why not let him feel it in the ways a
woman knows? Second, don't break your engagement again. As men know the
man, any of us would be afraid to the soul. He loves you, yes! He is
long-suffering for you, yes! But men know he has a lim