as I took
heart at the sight of her listening so quietly. I told her that I had
loved her that evening when we first met; that since then, in all my
waking moments, she had been in my thoughts; I had never loved another
woman; I never could love another woman. With my outstretched arm
hovering so near to her I might have taken her unawares, taken her into
my possession and throttled any rising protest; but to touch her with
my little finger would have seemed to me a profanation. I expected her
to sink into the embrace of that solitary arm.

But she did not. She looked up at me and said: "David, I am sorry--so
sorry."

"Sorry?"

There was a ring of indignation in my voice. I was not prepared for
such an enigmatic answer. Indeed, I had expected but one response, the
one that was mine by right of four years of devotion, by right of those
beacon-lights which I had seen so often in her eyes. Sorry? If she
was sorry, why had she led me to spend so many hours in her company,
why had she walked with me in "our lane," where the very air seemed to
brood with sentimental thought? I doubted if I heard her rightly.

"Very, very sorry, David," she repeated. "I never dreamed that you
cared for me in this way. I thought you were a good friend. I never
could think of you as anything else than a good friend."

I was too much stunned to speak. For days I had been rehearsing in my
mind what I should say to her when her hand was in mine, but I had not
prepared for a contingency like this. I was helpless. I could only
lean back in my chair and gaze at her reproachfully.

"You will forget me very soon," she said, looking up after a moment.
"You are going away in a few days. You must forget me, David. Promise
me you will."

She took up her brush and palette and began to touch the plaque
lightly. As I remember her now, Gladys Todd's face was loveliest in
profile. "Promise me," she said, tossing her head and focussing her
eyes on the tulips.

Poor David Malcolm! You were young then and little learned in the ways
of women. You did not know that to a woman a proposal is a thing not
to be ended lightly with consent. You did not know that when the
gentlest woman angles she is as any fisher who plays the game with rod
and reel and delights in the rushes of the victim. You made no mad
rushes. You sat stupidly quiescent. You saw the fair profile dimly as
though it were receding into the mists beyond your reach. Your