e speak of
it? You might so easily have made a mistake."

He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern on the sunny
path at their feet. "Mistakes are always easy to make; but if I had
made one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be
imploring you to hasten our marriage?"

She looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her
sunshade while she struggled for expression. "Yes," she said at
length. "You might want--once for all--to settle the question: it's
one way."

Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking
her insensible. Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile,
and a slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips.

"Well--?" he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at
her with a frown that he tried to make playful.

She dropped back into her seat and went on: "You mustn't think that a
girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears and one
notices--one has one's feelings and ideas. And of course, long before
you told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was some one
else you were interested in; every one was talking about it two years
ago at Newport. And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at
a dance--and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I
felt sorry for her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged."

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and
unclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade. The young man
laid his upon them with a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with an
inexpressible relief.

"My dear child--was THAT it? If you only knew the truth!"

She raised her head quickly. "Then there is a truth I don't know?"

He kept his hand over hers. "I meant, the truth about the old story
you speak of."

"But that's what I want to know, Newland--what I ought to know. I
couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong--an unfairness--to
somebody else. And I want to believe that it would be the same with
you. What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?"

Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like
bowing himself down at her feet. "I've wanted to say this for a long
time," she went on. "I've wanted to tell you that, when two people
really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which
make it right that they should--should go against public