o this for?"

He stood there, frowning in perplexity. Then with a sigh of relief,
"Supposing we sit down," he said, as one who has a happy inspiration. "I
don't know as I can explain this to your satisfaction--exactly. But I'll
try. It seemed to me--Don't you know, I thought--Hang it all, that King
Cophetua business--was that the chap's name?--never did appeal to me a
little bit. I'm dead sure that Beggar Maid had it in for him from the
start for his beastly condescending ways to her. And I was afraid you
might think--you see, it seemed to me that when your affairs were back
in the position they ought to be, perhaps you'd feel better towards me."

He looked at her with boyish entreaty in his eyes. It was as though she
were suddenly in the room with a new person. The expression of his face
left her breathless.

"Then you came to that boarding-house deliberately to----"

"I did. Deliberately to let you get a bit used to me. It might have
upset you to have a perfect stranger come up and marry you offhand."

"But--but"--she gasped.

She was flushed to the eyes. Suddenly he turned and switched on the
electric lights. Then he turned back and looked at her--hard. The rose
deepened.

"Surely, you're not pretending to tell me," he said slowly, as one
thoroughly bedazed, "that you don't know I'm so looney about you my hand
shakes whenever you come into the room?"

The girl looked away.

"You said that day--that day--that day, you know----"

"Well?"

"You said most distinctly that--you didn't love me."

He turned an exasperated face toward her.

"Said that? Of _course_ I said it. What did you expect me to say? How
apt would you have been to have taken me----"

"_Taken_ you!"

"----if I'd come up with the confession that your eyes set me crazy and
the impudent tilt of your little nose was very much on my nerves?
Supposing I'd told you that you bowled me over the moment I saw
you--It's God's truth. I saw you at the theater in New York just before
you left for Fort Leavenworth. I followed you there, but nothing that
wasn't brass buttons seemed to be having an inning; and I didn't care to
meet you at all, unless I could win out. So I left and went down to
Arizona, where there was some land business I had to look after. Then
McFay came down there and talked a good deal with his mouth; and I was
sure it was all off and was doubly glad I hadn't met you. Then came the
news of the earthquake and the fire; and I kept wait