ppy?"

"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.

"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You
and I mustn't have secrets."

"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you
know about him. And that was Margaret's secret, really. Why do you say
that, Guy?"

"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you
know about me--really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's
miniature."

"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."

Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the
time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked in
with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.

"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that
before I loved you I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of
course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell
you about them or shall I.... Can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"

"Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline
murmured in a low, hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word
she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest,
that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent.

"I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But they've stood so
at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday
at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in
some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline."

She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious
light poured through their wings.

"Why do you say nothing?" he asked.

"Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about
it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?"

"Of course?" he repeated.

"'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps
you won't understand."

"Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he
said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else."

She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done
had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that
gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover, but some one whom she
had wounded involuntarily.

"My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."

With a sigh she faded to him; with a sigh the dog sat down by his
master's neglected s