he tea-table, she began to make provision for a fresh
supply of tea.

Both words and manner astounded him. He, too, rose and followed her.

"How did you first guess?" he said, abruptly.

"Some gossip reached me." She looked up with a smile. "That's what
generally happens, isn't it?"

"There are no secrets nowadays," he said, sorely. "And then, there was
Miss Lawrence?"

"Yes, there was Miss Lawrence."

"Did you think badly of me?"

"Why should I? I understand Aileen is very pretty, and--"

"And will have a large fortune. You understand that?" he said, trying to
carry it off lightly.

"The fact is well known, isn't it?"

He sat down, twisting his hat between his hands. Then with an
exclamation he dashed it on the floor, and, rising, he bent over Julie,
his hands in his pockets.

"Julie," he said, in a voice that shook her, "don't, for God's sake,
give me up! I have behaved abominably, but don't take your friendship
from me. I shall soon be gone. Our lives will go different ways. That
was settled--alack!--before we met. I am honorably bound to that poor
child. She cares for me, and I can't get loose. But these last months
have been happy, haven't they? There are just three weeks left. At
present the strongest feeling in my heart is--" He paused for his word,
and he saw that she was looking through the window to the trees of the
garden, and that, still as she was, her lip quivered.

"What shall I say?" he resumed, with emotion. "It seems to me our case
stands all by itself, alone in the world. We have three weeks--give them
to me. Don't let's play at cross purposes any more. I want to be
sincere--I want to hide nothing from you in these days. Let us throw
aside convention and trust each other, as friends may, so that when I go
we may say to each other, 'Well, it was worth the pain. These have been
days of gold--we shall get no better if we live to be a hundred.'"

She turned her face to him in a tremulous amazement and there were tears
on her cheek. Never had his aspect been so winning. What he proposed
was, in truth, a mean thing; all the same, he proposed it nobly.

It was in vain that something whispered in her ear: "This girl to whom
he describes himself as 'honorably bound' has a fortune of half a
million. He is determined to have both her money and my heart." Another
inward voice, tragically generous, dashed down the thought, and, at the
moment, rightly; for as he stood over her, breathless and imper