"The only help it will give me will be to know that you do understand,"
she said at last; "to know that--that--you're not suspecting things
about me."

"And it will make things hard for you, otherwise, to have me know?" he
persisted.

"Yes." This time her answer was prompt. "It will end everything I am
trying to do, and destroy what I have already done."

Laurie threw his half-burned cigarette into the fire, as if to lend
greater emphasis to his next words.

"That settles it," he announced. "I won't listen to you."

She turned to look at him.

"But you must," she faltered. "I'm all ready to tell you. I've been
working myself up to it ever since you came."

"I know. I've watched the process, and I won't have another word." He
lit a second cigarette, drew in a mouthful of smoke, and sent it forth
again in a series of widening rings. "Your conversation is extremely
uninteresting," he explained; "and look at the setting we've got for
something romantic and worth while. This cozy room, this roaring
fire,"--he interrupted himself to glance through the nearest window--"a
ripping old snow-storm outside, that's getting worse every minute, and
the exhilarating sense that though we're prisoners, we've already taken
two perfectly good prisoners of our own; what more could one ask to make
an afternoon in the country really pleasant?"

He stopped, for she was crying again, and the sight, which had taxed his
strength an hour earlier, overtaxed it now. She overwhelmed him like a
breaker. He rose, and going close to her, knelt beside her chair.

"Doris," he begged, brokenly. "Don't, don't cry! I can't tell you how it
makes me feel. I--I can stand anything but that." He seized her hands
and tried to pull them away from her face. "Look at me," he urged. "I've
got all sorts of things to say to you, but I won't say them now. This
isn't the time or the place. But one thing, at least, I want you to
know. I _do_ trust you. I trust you absolutely. And whatever happens,
whatever all this incredible tangle may mean, I shall always trust you."

She wiped her eyes and looked into his, more serious in that moment than
she had ever seen them.

"I will stop," she promised, with a little catch in her voice. "But
please don't think I'm a hysterical fool. I'm not crying because I'm
frightened, but because--because--Laurie, you're so splendid!"

For a moment his hands tightened almost convulsively on hers. In the
next instant he rose to his