elp me," he went on, and then added quickly, "it's
a short story; will you be my wife?"

As he said the words, he felt as the lion-tamer does when he puts his
head in the lion's jaws. He expects to take it out again, but if the
lion should take a notion--His suspense was, however, of the shortest
possible duration, for instantly, like a reviving sprinkle on a fainting
face, the words fell on his ear:--

"I thank you for the honor, but I 'm sure we are not suited."

Annie had conned her answer on many a sleepless pillow, and had it by
heart. It came so glibly, although in such a constrained and agitated
voice, that he instantly knew it must have been long cut and dried.

It was now only left for him to do a decent amount of urging, and then
acquiesce with dignified melancholy and go off laughing in his sleeve.
What is he thinking of to stand there gazing at her downcast face as if
he were daft?

A strange thing had happened to him. The sweet familiarity of each
detail in the _petite_ figure before him was impressing his mind as
never before, now that he had achieved his purpose of putting it beyond
the possibility of his own possession. The little hands he had held so
often in the old days, conning each curve and dimple, reckoning them
more his hands than were his own, and far more dearly so; the wavy hair
he had kissed so fondly and delighted to touch; the deep dark eyes under
their long lashes, like forest lakes seen through environing thickets,
eyes that he had found his home in through so long and happy a time,--
why, they were his! Of course he had never meant to really forfeit
them, to lose them, and let them go to anybody else. The idea was
preposterous,--was laughable. It was indeed the first time it had
occurred to him in that light. He had only thought of her as losing him;
scarcely at all of himself as losing her. During the whole time he
had been putting himself in her place so constantly that he had failed
sufficiently to fully canvass the situation from his own point of view.
Wholly absorbed in estranging her from him, he had done nothing to
estrange himself from her.

It was rather with astonishment and even an appreciation of the absurd,
than any serious apprehension, that he now suddenly saw how he had
stultified himself, and come near doing himself a fatal injury. For
knowing that her present estrangement was wholly his work, it did not
occur to him but that he could undo it as easily as he had do