at last
together to do something--I forget now what--in one of the greenhouses.
Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most
barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don't
think it got done.

Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of
the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between
staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big
branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make
an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she
stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay.

"Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me with
eyes that said, "NOW."

"Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did."

She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But
she said nothing, and stood waiting.

"Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I--I love you."

"If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingers
she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could you
write the things you do to me?"

"I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always."

I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was
stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware
of the impossibility of conveying that to her.

"You wrote them."

"But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don't mean them."

"Yes. But perhaps you do."

I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, "I don't."

"You think you--you love me, Willie. But you don't."

"I do. Nettie! You know I do."

For answer she shook her head.

I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. "Nettie," I said,
"I'd rather have you than--than my own opinions."

The selaginella still engaged her. "You think so now," she said.

I broke out into protestations.

"No," she said shortly. "It's different now."

"But why should two letters make so much difference?" I said.

"It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's different
for good."

She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression.
She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly,
but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end.

But I did not mean it to end like that.

"For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!"

"I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all
her pose conveying her finality.