ill you tell me
now what it is that's gone all wrong?"

"Yes," she said with a quickly drawn breath. "I've had to tell John
that I don't love him any more, and don't want to be his wife."

If one of those still and stately pines which lend Lover's Lane the
appearance of a cathedral aisle had fallen across my shoulders, I could
hardly have been more suddenly stunned.

When I looked at her the corners of her lovely mouth were down like
those of a child in trouble.

"Please don't look at me," she said.

We rode on very slowly in silence. Sometimes, without looking, I could
not be sure that she was still crying. Then I would hear a little
pathetic sniffling--a catching of the breath. Or she would fall to
pounding the thigh with her fist.

But she pulled herself together very quickly and borrowed my
handkerchief and when we reached the telegraph office her own husband
could not have known that she had been crying.

She held my pony while I telegraphed Gerald Colebridge that I could not
go to California with him.

Far from looking like one who had recently been crying, she looked a
triumphant little creature, as she sat the one pony, and held the
other. The color had all come back to her face, and she looked--why,
she looked happy!

XIII

"Well, my dear," said my mother, "we shall miss you."

"Oh," I said, "I've given it up. I'm not going."

As she had said that she would miss me, this answer ought to have given
my mother unmixed pleasure. It didn't seem to. She smiled upon me
with the greatest affection, and at the same time looked troubled.

"When you came into my room this morning your mind was definitely made
up. Has anything happened?"

"Only that I've changed my mind. Aiken is too nice to leave."

"I sometimes think," said my mother, "that the life you lead is
narrowing. At your age, how I should have jumped at the chance to see
California in spring! But I shan't ask you why you don't jump. I know
very well you'd not tell me."

"Must I have a reason? They say women don't have reasons for doing
things. Why should men?"

"A woman," said my mother, "does nothing without a reason. But often
she has to be ashamed of her reasons, and so she pretends she hasn't
any. Men are stronger. They don't have to give their reasons, and so
they don't pretend."

"Maybe," I said, "I'm fond of my family and don't want to be away from
them."

My mother blushed a little, and laughed.

"I sha