you pretend, that you weren't I shall never forgive you!"

"But I was! Of course I was. I was afraid--"

"Isn't that what I said?" She triumphed over him with another laugh, and
cowered a little closer to him, if that could be.

They were standing, without knowing how they had got to their feet; and
now without any purpose of the kind, they began to stroll again among
the garden paths, and to ask and to answer questions, which touched
every point of their common history, and yet left it a mine of
inexhaustible knowledge for all future time. Out of the sweet and dear
delight of this encyclopedian reserve two or three facts appeared with
a present distinctness. One of these was that Burnamy had regarded her
refusal to be definite at Carlsbad as definite refusal, and had meant
never to see her again, and certainly never to speak again of love to
her. Another point was that she had not resented his coming back that
last night, but had been proud and happy in it as proof of his love,
and had always meant somehow to let him know that she was torched by
his trusting her enough to come back while he was still under that cloud
with Mr. Stoller. With further logic, purely of the heart, she acquitted
him altogether of wrong in that affair, and alleged in proof, what Mr.
Stoller had said of it to Mr. March. Burnamy owned that he knew what
Stoller had said, but even in his present condition he could not accept
fully her reading of that obscure passage of his life. He preferred to
put the question by, and perhaps neither of them cared anything about
it except as it related to the fact that they were now each other's
forever.

They agreed that they must write to Mr. and Mrs. March at once; or at
least, Agatha said, as soon as she had spoken to her father. At her
mention of her father she was aware of a doubt, a fear, in Burnamy which
expressed itself by scarcely more than a spiritual consciousness from
his arm to the hands which she had clasped within it. "He has always
appreciated you," she said courageously, "and I know he will see it in
the right light."

She probably meant no more than to affirm her faith in her own ability
finally to bring her father to a just mind concerning it; but Burnamy
accepted her assurance with buoyant hopefulness, and said he would see
General Triscoe the first thing in the morning.

"No, I will see him," she said, "I wish to see him first; he will expect
it of me. We had better go in, now," she