ness.

"But you can't help it, nor can I so I must go on doing it with all my
heart till you marry, and then well, then I'm afraid I may hate somebody
instead," and Mac spoilt the pen by an involuntary slash of his knife.

"Please don't, Mac!"

"Do which, love or hate?"

"Don't do either go and care for someone else; there are plenty of nice
girls who will be glad to make you happy," said Rose, intent upon ending
her disquiet in some way.

"That is too easy. I enjoy working for my blessings, and the harder I
have to work, the more I value them when they come."

"Then if I suddenly grew very kind, would you stop caring about me?"
asked Rose, wondering if that treatment would free her from a passion
which both touched and tormented her.

"Try and see." But there was a traitorous glimmer in Mac's eyes which
plainly showed what a failure it would be.

"No, I'll get something to do, so absorbing I shall forget all about
you."

"Don't think about me if it troubles you," he said tenderly.

"I can't help it." Rose tried to catch back the words, but it was too
late, and she added hastily, "That is, I cannot help wishing you would
forget me. It is a great disappointment to find I was mistaken when I
hoped such fine things of you."

"Yes, you were very sure that it was love when it was poetry, and now
you want poetry when I've nothing on hand but love. Will both together
please you?"

"Try and see."

"I'll do my best. Anything else?" he asked, forgetting the small task
she had given him in his eagerness to attempt the greater.

"Tell me one thing. I've often wanted to know, and now you speak of it
I'll venture to ask. Did you care about me when you read Keats to me
last summer?"

"No."

"When did you begin?" asked Rose, smiling in spite of herself at his
unflattering honesty.

"How can I tell? Perhaps it did begin up there, though, for that talk
set us writing, and the letters showed me what a beautiful soul you had.
I loved that first it was so quick to recognize good things, to use them
when they came, and give them out again as unconsciously as a flower
does its breath. I longed for you to come home, and wanted you to find
me altered for the better in some way as I had found you. And when you
came it was very easy to see why I needed you to love you entirely, and
to tell you so. That's all, Rose."

A short story, but it was enough the voice that told it with such simple
truth made the few words so eloqu