ch had
once overlain it like the hard veneer on a table-top, had been scorched
away as in a baptism by fire; from which all that was best in it had
come out at once strengthened and chastened. And she thought that the
shining quality of honesty in his face must be such as to strike
strangers on the street.

And now, behind her on the office floor, she heard his footsteps, and in
one breath was suddenly cold with the fear that her hour had come, and
hot with the fear that it had not.

Engrossed with her papers, she moved so as to keep her back toward him;
but he, with a directness which would not flinch even in this untried
emergency, deliberately intruded himself between her and the table; and
so once more they stood face to face.

"I don't understand you," he began, his manner at its quietest. "Why do
you want to do this for me?"

At this close range, she glanced once at him and instantly looked away.
His face was as white as paper; and when she saw that her heart first
stopped beating, and then pounded off in a wild frightened paean.

"I--cannot tell you--I don't know--exactly."

"What do you mean?"

She hardly recognized his voice; instinctively she began backing away.

"I don't think I--can explain. You--rather terrify me this morning."

"Are you in love with ME?" he demanded in a terrible voice, beginning at
the wrong end, as he would be sure to do.

Finger at her lip, her blue eyes, bright with unshed tears, resting upon
his in a gaze as direct as a child's, Sharlee nodded her head up and
down.

And that was all the hint required by clever Mr. Surface, the famous
social scientist. He advanced somehow, and took her in his arms. On the
whole, it was rather surprising how satisfactorily he did it,
considering that she was the first woman he had ever touched in all his
days.

So they stood through a time that might have been a minute and might
have been an age, since all of them that mattered had soared away to the
sunlit spaces where no time is. After awhile, driven by a strange fierce
desire to see her face in the light of this new glory, he made a gentle
effort to hold her off from him, but she clung to him, crying, "No, no!
I don't want you to see me yet."

After another interval of uncertain length, she said:--

"All along my heart has cried out that you couldn't have done that, and
hurt me so. _You couldn't_. I will never doubt my heart again. And you
were so fine--so fine--to forgive me so eas