me time it would hurt you a great deal more if I
_shouldn't_ tell you, but encourage you, and let you go on thinking that
perhaps I liked you more than any one else, when I _didn't_. Now
wouldn't that be wrong? You don't know how glad it makes me feel that I
have been of some good to you, and that is just why I want to be sincere
_now_ and not make you think any less of me--think any worse of me."

"Oh, I know," answered young Haight. "I know I shouldn't have said
anything about it. I knew beforehand, or thought I knew, that you didn't
care in that way."

"Maybe I have been wrong," she replied, "in not seeing that you cared so
much, and have given you a wrong impression. I thought you knew how it
was all the time."

"Knew how what was?" he asked, looking up.

"Why," she said, "knew how Van and I were."

"I knew that Van cared for you a great deal."

"Yes, but you know," she went on, hesitating and confused, "you know we
are engaged. We have been engaged for nearly two years."

"But _he_ don't consider himself as engaged!" The words were almost out
of Haight's mouth, but he shut his teeth against them and kept
silence--he hardly knew why.

"Suppose Vandover were out of the question," he said, getting up and
smiling in order not to seem as serious as he really was.

"Ah," she said, smiling back at him. "I don't know; that's a hard
question to answer. I've never _asked_ myself _that_ question."

"Well, I'm saving you the trouble, you see," he answered, still smiling.
"I am asking it _for_ you."

"But I don't want to answer such a question off-hand like that; how can
I tell? It would only be _perhaps_, just now."

Young Haight answered quickly that "just now" he would be contented with
that "perhaps"; but Turner did not hear this. She had spoken at the same
time as he, exclaiming, "But what is the good of talking of that?
Because no matter what happened I feel as though I could not break my
promise to Van, even if I should want to. Because I have talked like
this, Dolly," she went on more seriously, "you must not be deceived or
get a wrong impression. You understand how things are, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," he answered, still trying to carry it off with a laugh. "I
know, I know. But now I hope you won't let anything I have said bother
you, and that things will go on just as if I hadn't spoken, just as if
nothing had happened."

"Why, of course," she said, laughing with him again. "Of _course_, why
shouldn't t