you if I tell you that
you're really and truly the very first love I ever had as well as my
last. I've had sent over--I got it only yesterday--this lil' photograph
of a miniature portrait of one of my ancestor's relations--a Corner just
as you are. It's here...."

He had considerable difficulties with his pockets and papers. Cecily,
mute and flushed and inconvenienced by a preposterous and unaccountable
impulse to weep, took the picture he handed her.

"When I was a lil' fellow of fifteen," said Mr. Direck in the tone of
one producing a melancholy but conclusive piece of evidence, "I
_worshipped_ that miniature. It seemed to me--the loveliest person....
And--it's just you...."

He too was preposterously moved.

It seemed a long time before Cecily had anything to say, and then what
she had to say she said in a softened, indistinct voice. "You're very
kind," she said, and kept hold of the little photograph.

They had halted for the photograph. Now they walked on again.

"I thought I'd like to tell you," said Mr. Direck and became
tremendously silent.

Cecily found him incredibly difficult to answer. She tried to make
herself light and offhand, and to be very frank with him.

"Of course," she said, "I knew--I felt somehow--you meant to say
something of this sort to me--when you asked me to come with you--"

"Well?" he said.

"And I've been trying to make my poor brain think of something to say to
you."

She paused and contemplated her difficulties....

"Couldn't you perhaps say something of the same kind--such as I've been
trying to say?" said Mr. Direck presently, with a note of earnest
helpfulness. "I'd be very glad if you could."

"Not exactly," said Cecily, more careful than ever.

"Meaning?"

"I think you know that you are the best of friends. I think you are,
oh--a Perfect Dear."

"Well--that's all right--so far."

"That _is_ as far."

"You don't know whether you love me? That's what you mean to say."

"No.... I feel somehow it isn't that.... Yet...."

"There's nobody else by any chance?"

"No." Cecily weighed things. "You needn't trouble about that."

"Only ... only you don't know."

Cecily made a movement of assent.

"It's no good pretending I haven't thought about you," she said.

"Well, anyhow I've done my best to give you the idea," said Mr. Direck.
"I seem now to have been doing that pretty nearly all the time."

"Only what should we do?"

Mr. Direck felt this question was si