of something fresh and cool despite her passion--which had
caused him to think of a nymph on fire when he first held her in his
arms.

"Well?" he said at last. "It's all right now, isn't it?"

She shook her head. "I'm not going to begin that all over again," she
said rather drearily. "You made me look silly once, but you won't have
a chance a second time. So long as you thought you might marry Miss
Laura, you were afraid of the talk and kept out of my way. Now she has
turned you down, you come after me again. I don't know why. Just for
your own fun, I suppose. You can't deny you avoided me."

"No." He stood with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. "I don't.
But I was in a devil of a hole, Caroline. I was engaged to marry a
good girl, and a nice girl, and shortly after the wedding day was fixed
I did a thing which only a cad would have done." He paused, Caroline
gazing at him with wide eyes. Then he went on: "I borrowed a large sum
of money from her."

"Is that all?" breathed Caroline. "I don't see what difference that
made."

"Don't you? Well, perhaps not--but any man would," he answered. "I
was faced with ruin unless I could tide things over, and I couldn't
take the money and be philandering with another girl at the same time."

"You didn't seem to hold those views until the last week or two," she
said.

"I had not borrowed the money before," he said shortly. "Though I knew
well enough I was not doing the square thing there, either by you or
her."

She looked at him with a keen, set, impersonal intentness in her gaze
which he could not understand. "Then you are sure she does not care
enough for you to marry you? She threw you over because she wanted to
stop single?"

"No doubt of that," he said with a sort of rueful conviction. "Though,
of course, being the girl she is, she was frightfully upset at the idea
of behaving badly to me. As a matter of fact, she seemed so distressed
during the whole interview that I couldn't help feeling ashamed of
myself. I couldn't let her reproach herself so acutely; I had to tell
her I--I wasn't broken-hearted."

"She would wonder why, didn't she?" said Caroline, in a tone which he
could not understand.

"Yes," he answered. "So I told her."

"What did you say?"

He waited a moment, looking down at the slim figure outlined darkly
against the immense radiance of the sea. But he did not touch her.
This was a different thing indeed from that hot