r's hospitality shamefully. If I can help it, I'll never act like a
rotter again, I hate a prig, Cynthia, like the devil, but I hate a
rotter even more. I hope I can learn to be neither."

As he spoke, Cynthia clenched her hands so tightly that the finger-nails
were bruising her tender palms, but her eyes remained dry and her lips
did not tremble. If he could have seen _her_ on some parties this last
year....

"You have changed a lot." Her words were barely audible. "You have
changed an awful lot."

He smiled. "I hope so. There are times now when I hate myself, but I
never hate myself so much as when I think of Prom. I've learned a lot in
the last year, and I hope I've learned enough to treat a decent girl
decently. I have never apologized to you the way I think I ought to."

"Don't!" she cried, her voice vibrant with pain. "Don't! I was more to
blame than you were. Let's not talk about that."

"All right. I'm more than willing to forget it." He paused and then
continued very seriously, "I can't ask you to marry me now,
Cynthia--but--but are you willing to wait for me? It may take time, but
I promise I'll work hard."

Cynthia's hands clenched convulsively. "No, Hugh honey," she whispered;
"I'll never marry you. I--I don't love you."

"What?" he demanded, his senses swimming in hopeless confusion. "What?"

She did not say that she knew that he did not love her; she did not tell
him how much his quixotic chivalry moved her. Nor did she tell him that
she knew only too well that she could lead him to hell, as he said, but
that that was the only place that she could lead him. These things she
felt positive of, but to mention them meant an argument--and an
argument would have been unendurable.

"No," she repeated, "I don't love you. You see, you're so different from
what I remembered. You've grown up and you've changed. Why, Hugh, we're
strangers. I've realized that while you've been talking. We don't know
each other, not a bit. We only saw each other for a week summer before
last and for two days last spring. Now we're two altogether different
people; and we don't know each other at all."

She prayed that he would deny her statements, that he would say they
knew each other by instinct--anything, so long as he did not agree.

"I certainly don't know you the way you're talking now," he said almost
roughly, his pride hurt and his mind in a turmoil. "I know that we don't
know each other, but I never thought that you