yself."

"But how? Tell me how you found out. What happened?"

"Don't, you're hurting my hand, Donald. I'll tell you all about it as
soon as I can, but please don't ask so many questions all at once, and
please tell me first that you are glad, that my great secret makes you
happy, as it does me."

"Happy? Oh, great heavens! But you? Are you really pleased? You said
that you loved him!"

"And so I did, and do ... dearly. But, you see, Donald, although I have
cared for him for a long, long while, there was something about my
affection that I could not explain, even to myself. It was ... was
different, somehow, from what ... from what I felt it must be for the
man whom I might marry. Now I know that it was the subconscious call of
the blood, the love of a sister for a brother, and never anything else."

Lifted and swayed by a great happiness and reborn hope, Donald laughed
aloud.

"Oh, you're a strange little girl, Smiles. I had not realized that you
were fully grown up until to-night; but now I know that you are a
woman,--a child no longer. My little Rose would never have tried to be
so dramatic, nor would she have tried to analyze her love, and label it
the call of kin, rather than that of a mate. I used to think that you
were a clear crystal in which I might see reflected your very heart and
soul, but now you have become a woman and therefore a mystery. Oh,
woman, what do you know about love? Not the kind that Philip inspired in
you; but the name which burns unquenchable--which purifies and
strengthens, or consumes the one who ..." he stopped, surprised at his
own rush of words,--and abashed.

The hand, which she had slipped unconsciously into his, trembled and
thrilled him.

"Perhaps ... I do ... know it, Donald," came the words, barely audible.

"Smiles! It isn't possible that you ... that I ... Oh, my dear one,
don't say anything to make me hope anew, after what I have endured
to-night unless ..."

"Do you really care, Don? In that _other_ way, I mean."

He stood unsteadily up; things had become unreal and he could not speak.
Smiles, still holding his hand, rose also. The top of her head came just
below the level of his eyes; the moonlight across it set her wavy hair
to shimmering. She could not lift her eyes to his, but with a brave, low
voice, she went on, when she saw that he would not answer.

"All this past week I have been the most brazen of girls, and
deliberately given you a hundred chances to