ou a good reason,
then will you change about me?"

She drew a quick little breath.

"I can't change in that way," she said; "you know that I do not want to
marry again: marriage is too awful an undertaking. Don't you see that
even now it does not make you always happy to be around me--"

"I am never around you," he exclaimed indignantly. "I never have hardly
touch you. I have been with you not as a man, but as an angel. _Je me
comporte comme un ange--comme un ange--c'est moi qui vous le dit!_ I
have given you one kiss such as a small baby might give its mother, and
that is all;--and then you say that I am always around you."

He ceased speaking, and looked straitly and darkly before him. She
wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

"I tell you," he continued violently after a short interval, "I am very
much too good. Whatever you bid me do, that I do. Whatever you bid me
not do, that I do not. And you do not thank me, or trust me, or treat me
as a friend. _Vous avez toujours peur de moi._ When I approach you, you
have always the air to expect that I will displease you. Have I deserved
that? Have I behaved badly once? Did I kiss you when you knew nothing
and I held you there in the mud--the night when I lose my umbrella? _Mon
Dieu_, you are very _drole_, if you have known many men and do not
appreciate me."

He stopped as if choked.

They had passed beyond the bridge and entered upon a path along the
river bank, a path bordered with willow trees. The sky was more
brilliantly gorgeous than ever, but under foot it was wet indeed.

"Try not to stamp so much as you walk," she asked him very gently; "you
keep splashing me."

"What is splash?" he demanded gloomily; "something that annoys your
ears?"

"No, something that spoils my boots."

"I do not care if I spoil those boots; I find them most ugly."

"Perhaps; but I could not be here but for them."

He walked on with somewhat less vigor.

"Let us talk about us," he suggested, presently.

"With reference to what?"

"To me."

"No, no," she said unwillingly.

"Yes; why not?"

"You always come back to that same subject; your mind appears to follow
a circuit, like a squirrel in a ring."

"'Wheel,' you mean."

"Well, 'wheel,' then."

"What squirrel? We never have talked of a squirrel before."

Rosina's laugh rang out among the willows.

"_Decidement vous n'etes pas du tout poli_," he cried angrily. "You say
I am like a squirrel; I ask what squirre