come out in the
Telegram. It has been very exciting. Poor boy, you look tired."

He straightened himself suddenly. "I have forgotten,--actually
forgotten," he cried a little bitterly. "Why, I am a pauper, a bankrupt,
I--"

"Harry," she interrupted gently, but very firmly, "you must not say what
you were going to say. I cannot allow it. Money came between us before.
It must not do so again. Am I not right, dear?"

She smiled at him with the lips of a child and the eyes of a woman.

"Yes," he agreed after a struggle, "you are right. But now I must begin
all over again. It will be a long time before I shall be able to claim
you. I have my way to make."

"Yes," said she diplomatically.

"But you!" he cried suddenly. "The papers remind me. How about that
Morton?"

"What about him?" asked the girl, astonished. "He is very happily
engaged."

Thorpe's face slowly filled with blood.

"You'll break the engagement at once," he commanded a little harshly.

"Why should I break the engagement?" demanded Hilda, eying him with some
alarm.

"I should think it was obvious enough."

"But it isn't," she insisted. "Why?"

Thorpe was silent--as he always had been in emergencies, and as he
was destined always to be. His was not a nature of expression, but of
action. A crisis always brought him, like a bull-dog, silently to the
grip.

Hilda watched him puzzled, with bright eyes, like a squirrel. Her
quick brain glanced here and there among the possibilities, seeking the
explanation. Already she knew better than to demand it of him.

"You actually don't think he's engaged to ME!" she burst out finally.

"Isn't he?" asked Thorpe.

"Why no, stupid! He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's sister.
Now WHERE did you get that silly idea?"

"I saw it in the paper."

"And you believe all you see! Why didn't you ask Wallace--but of course
you wouldn't! Harry, you are the most incoherent dumb old brute I ever
saw! I could shake you! Why don't you say something occasionally when
it's needed, instead of sitting dumb as a sphinx and getting into all
sorts of trouble? But you never will. I know you. You dear old bear! You
NEED a wife to interpret things for you. You speak a different language
from most people." She said this between laughing and crying; between a
sense of the ridiculous uselessness of withholding a single timely word,
and a tender pathetic intuition of the suffering such a nature must
endure. In the prospect