nd consisted mostly of palatial bric-a-brac
and the varied spoils of travel.

He cheered up, however, in proposing to her that they should buy a
Castle in Spain and put them into it. The fancy pleased her, but
visibly she shrank from a step which it involved, so that he was, as
it were, forced to say, half jokingly, half ruefully, "I can imagine
your not caring for this rubbish or what became of it, Charlotte, but
what about the owner?"

"The owner?" she asked, as it were somnambulantly.

"Yes. Marrying him, say, sometime soon."

"Oh, Peter, I couldn't."

"Couldn't? You know that's not playing the game exactly."

"Yes; but not--not right away?"

"Well, I don't know much about it in my own case, but isn't it usual
to fix some approximate date? When should you think?"

"Oh, Peter, I _can't_ think."

"Will you let me fix it? I must go West and sell out and pull up, you
know, preparatory to never going again. We can fix the day now or we
can fix it when I come back."

"Oh, when you come back," she entreated so eagerly that Peter said:

"Charlotte, let me ask you one thing. Were you ever sorry you wrote me
that taking-back letter?"

"Why, Peter, you know how I am. When I have decided something I have
undecided it. That's all."

From gay he turned to grave. "I ought to have thought. I haven't been
fair; _I_ haven't played the game. I ought to have given you another
chance; and I haven't, have I?"

"Why, I suppose a girl can always change," Charlotte said,
suggestively.

"Yes, but you won't always be a girl. I've never asked you if you
wanted to change. I ask you now. Do you?"

"How can I tell? Hadn't we better let it go as it is? Only not hurry
about--about--marrying?"

"Certainly not hurry about marrying. I've wondered that a girl could
make up her mind to marry any given man. Haven't you ever wished that
you had not made up your mind about me?"

"Hundreds of times. But I don't know that I meant anything by it."

He took her hand from where it lay in her lap as again she sat on one
of the white-and-gold thrones beside him and gently pressed it. "Well,
then, let's play we have never been engaged. I'm going West to-night
to settle things up for good, and I won't be back for three or four
months, and when I come back we'll start new. I'll ask you, and you
shall say yes or no just as if you had never said either before."

"Peter, when you talk like that!" She saw his brown, round face dimly
through her