the mountains?" she said, in reply to my information about my plans
of travel.

"Doctor Beaugarcon says nothing else can so quickly restore me."

"Stay there for the rhododendrons, then," she bade me. "No sight more
beautiful in all the South."

"Town seems deserted," I pursued. "Everybody gone."

"Oh, not everybody!"

"All the interesting people."

"Thank you."

"I meant, interesting to you."

I saw her decide not to be angry; and her decision changed and saved our
conversation from the trashy, bantering tone which it was taking, and
brought it to a pass most unexpected to both of us.

She gave me a charming and friendly smile. "Well, you, at any rate, are
going away. And I am really sorry for that."

Her eyes rested upon me with perfect frankness. I was not in love with
Eliza La Heu, but nearer to love than I had ever been then, and it would
have been easy, very easy, to let one's self go straight onward into
love. There are for a man more ways of falling into that state than
romancers would have us to believe, and one of them is by an assent
of the will at a certain given moment, which the heart promptly
follows--just as a man in a moment decides he will espouse a cause, and
soon finds himself hotly fighting for it body and soul. I could have
gone out of that Exchange completely in love with Eliza La Heu; but my
will did not give its assent, and I saw John Mayrant not as a rival, but
as one whose happiness I greatly desired.

"Thank you," I said, "for telling me you are sorry I am going. And
now, may I treat you more than ever as a friend, and tell you of a
circumstance which Kings Port does not know?"

It put her on her guard. "Don't be indiscreet," she laughed.

"Isn't timely indiscretion discretion?"

"And don't be clever," she said. "Tell me what you have to say--if
you're quite sure you'll not be sorry."

"Quite sure. There's no reason--now that the untruth is properly and
satisfactorily established--that one person should not know that John
Mayrant broke that engagement." And I told her the whole of it. "If I'm
outrageous to share this secret with you," I concluded, "I can only say
that I couldn't stand the unfairness any longer."

"He jumped straight in?" said Eliza.

"Oh, straight!"

"Of course," she murmured.

"And just after declaring that he wouldn't."

"Of course," she murmured again. "And the current took them right away?"

"Instantly."

"Was he very tired when you got to hi