ou at least understand me, and are free from his
superstition."

To my surprise she regarded me with a serious air, and replied: "I do
not know what you mean by superstition. My father believes that
something has happened, and I feel that he is right."

"You do not mean to tell me," I said, "that you believe anything has
happened that can concern us?"

She made no reply. I looked at her with some astonishment, and wondered
if I had offended her by opposing her father's childish views.

"Perhaps," I persisted, "you, too, think I am stupidly unreasonable
because I will not consent to be dishonestly chimerical."

I well remember the look of sad reproach with which she silently
regarded me, and I well remember, too, the thought that came into my
mind. I said to myself: "This is the same obduracy that her father has
shown. Odd it is that I never noticed the trait in her before." Then I
added, with an equal obduracy that I was not conscious of:

"Perhaps you, too, have discovered some peculiarity of good sense in me
that is offensive, and you are afraid that something will happen if
we----"

Here she interrupted me in her quiet, resolute, and reproachful way.

"Something has happened," she said.

I was amazed. If I had suddenly discovered that the woman I loved was
unfaithful to me it could not have produced, in my frame of mind at that
moment, a greater shock. It seemed to me then that the wooing of months,
the confidence and affection of a year, were to be sacrificed in a
moment of infatuated stubbornness. The very thought was so unnatural
that it produced a revulsion in my own feelings.

"My darling," I said, as I went toward her impulsively, "we are playing
the unworthy part of fools. Nothing can ever happen that will make us
love each other less, or prevent you from being my wife."

I put my arm around her in the old familiar way. She was passive and
irresponsive. She stood there, limply holding the curtain, with one
white arm upraised, her beautiful head bent over and her eyes cast down
so that I could not look into her face. This stony obduracy was so new
and unlike her that I withdrew my arm and stepped back a little to
regard her with astonishment, not unmingled with pique. At that moment
she lifted her head slowly, and as she looked at me with a dreamy and
far-away pathos I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

"It seems to me," she said, with a voice that sounded as if it was
addressed to an invi