id, "if you want me."

She sat down, and John leaning against the mantel and looking down at
her, said, "I came in here to write to you what is not easy to write or
say--I prefer to put it into speech."

"Indeed! I am quite ready to listen."

"After your recent treatment of me, I have no inclination to make myself
needlessly unpleasant. You have made it plain to me that what my heart
longs for is to be put aside forever. There is something due to a man's
self-respect. But if you were a man, Leila, I could say more easily
something else. Are we--am I to lose also your friendship--or is even
that at an end?"

The blue eyes became less adventurous as she said, "I don't understand
you, John."

"I think you do. Long as I have known you, I cannot have known you fully.
Blake used to say that everybody is several people, and just now--here
has come into my life some one I don't know--and don't want to know."

"Indeed! It must be rather confusing to be several people. Your friend,
Mr. Blake, as your letters showed, was rather given to enigmatical
statements. I should like to know him. Would you please, John, to bring
me my fan--I left it in that delightful book you interrupted."

"Certainly," he said, now a trifle more at ease. For Leila to ask of any
one such a service was so unlike her that he felt it to be a betrayal of
embarrassment, and was humorously pleased as he went and came again.

She took the fan and played with that expressive piece of a woman's
outfit while John brought the talk back to its starting-point.

"Cannot you be the Leila I used to know--a frank girl; or are you to use
one of your many disguises and just leave things as they have been of
late?"

"If you will say plainly just what you mean, John"--the fan was in active
use--"I will be as frank as possible."

"But you may not like it, Leila."

"Oh, go on. I know you are going to be unpleasant."

He looked at her with surprise. "We are fencing--and I hate it. Once at
West Point I was fencing with a man, my friend; the button broke off my
foil and I hurt him seriously. He fell dead beside me in the trenches at
Vicksburg--dead!"

"Oh, John!"--the fan ceased moving.

"What I mean is that one may chance, you or I, to say something that will
leave in memory that which no years will blot out. Don't be vexed with
me. I have had a cruel summer. What with Uncle Jim and Aunt Ann--and now
with you, I--well--you told me after that dreadful night when U