blueberry patch."

"There were a great many blueberries."

She walked on, and he said, "And that bridge--you don't have that
feeling of having been here before?"

"No."

"Am I walking too fast for you, Miss Pasmer?"

"No; I like to walk fast."

"But wouldn't you like to sit down? On this wayside log, for example?"
He pointed it out with his stick. "It seems to invite repose, and I know
you must be tired."

"I'm not tired."

"Ah, that shows that you didn't lie awake grieving over your follies
all night. I hope you rested well, Miss Pasmer." She said nothing. "If
I thought--if I could hope that you hadn't, it would be a bond of
sympathy, and I would give almost anything for a bond of sympathy just
now, Miss Pasmer. Alice!" he said, with sudden seriousness. "I know that
I'm not worthy even to think of you, and that you're whole worlds above
me in every way. It's that that takes all heart out of me, and leaves
me without a word to say when I'd like to say so much. I would like to
speak--tell you--"

She interrupted him. "I wish to speak to you, Mr. Mavering, and tell you
that--I'm very tired, and I'm going back to the hotel. I must ask you to
let me go back alone."

"Alice, I love you."

"I'm sorry you said it--sorry, sorry."

"Why?" he asked, with hopeless futility.

"Because there can be no love between us--not friendship even--not
acquaintance."

"I shouldn't have asked for your acquaintance, your friendship, if--"
His words conveyed a delicate reproach, and they stung her, because they
put her in the wrong.

"No matter," she began wildly. "I didn't mean to wound you. But we must
part, and we must never see each other again:"

He stood confused, as if he could not make it out or believe it. "But
yesterday--"

"It's to-day now."

"Ah, no! It's last night. And I can explain."

"No!" she cried. "You shall not make me out so mean and vindictive. I
don't care for last night, nor for anything that happened." This was not
true, but it seemed so to her at the moment; she thought that she really
no longer resented his association with Miss Anderson and his separation
from herself in all that had taken place.

"Then what is it?"

"I can't tell you. But everything is over between us--that's all."

"But yesterday--and all these days past--you seemed--"

"It's unfair of you to insist--it's ungenerous, ungentlemanly."

That word, which from a woman's tongue always strikes a man like a blow
in the fac