bout me to you that will make you believe I'm a professional forger."

"No. We both know they won't," she said. "We both know you're the sort
of person everybody in the world says nice things about." She lifted
her hand to silence him as he laughed at this. "Oh, of course you are! I
think perhaps you're a little flirtatious--most quiet men have that one
sly way with 'em--oh, yes, they do! But you happen to be the kind of
man everybody loves to praise. And if you weren't, _I_ shouldn't hear
anything terrible about you. I told you I was unpopular: I don't see
anybody at all any more. The only man except you who's been to see me in
a month is that fearful little fat Frank Dowling, and I sent word to HIM
I wasn't home. Nobody'd tell me of your wickedness, you see."

"Then let me break some news to you," Russell said. "Nobody would tell
me of yours, either. Nobody's even mentioned you to me."

She burlesqued a cry of anguish. "That IS obscurity! I suppose I'm
too apt to forget that they say the population's about half a million
nowadays. There ARE other people to talk about, you feel, then?"

"None that I want to," he said. "But I should think the size of the
place might relieve your mind of what seems to insist on burdening it.
Besides, I'd rather you thought me a better man than you do."

"What kind of a man do I think you are?"

"The kind affected by what's said about people instead of by what they
do themselves."

"Aren't you?"

"No, I'm not," he said. "If you want our summer evenings to be over
you'll have to drive me away yourself."

"Nobody else could?"

"No."

She was silent, leaning forward, with her elbows on her knees and her
clasped hands against her lips. Then, not moving, she said softly:

"Well--I won't!"

She was silent again, and he said nothing, but looked at her, seeming
to be content with looking. Her attitude was one only a graceful person
should assume, but she was graceful; and, in the wan light, which made
a prettily shaped mist of her, she had beauty. Perhaps it was beauty of
the hour, and of the love scene almost made into form by what they had
both just said, but she had it; and though beauty of the hour passes, he
who sees it will long remember it and the hour when it came.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked.

She leaned back in her chair and did not answer at once. Then she said:

"I don't know; I doubt if I was thinking of anything. It seems to me I
wasn't. I think I was ju