oment. "Your logic is most as good as a woman's. Do
change your mind and go to see her now," she went on. "She will probably
be at home by the time you get to Charles Street. If she was a little
strange, a little stiff with you before (I know just how she must have
been), all that will be different to-day."

"Why will it be different?"

"Oh, she will be easier, more genial, much softer."

"I don't believe it," said Ransom; and his scepticism seemed none the
less complete because it was light and smiling.

"She is much happier now--she can afford not to mind you."

"Not to mind me? That's a nice inducement for a gentleman to go and see
a lady!"

"Well, she will be more gracious, because she feels now that she is more
successful."

"You mean because she has brought you out? Oh, I have no doubt that has
cleared the air for her immensely, and you have improved her very much.
But I have got a charming impression out here, and I have no wish to put
another--which won't be charming, anyhow you arrange it--on top of it."

"Well, she will be sure to know you have been round here, at any rate,"
Verena rejoined.

"How will she know, unless you tell her?"

"I tell her everything," said the girl; and now as soon as she had
spoken, she blushed. He stood before her, tracing a figure on the mosaic
pavement with his cane, conscious that in a moment they had become more
intimate. They were discussing their affairs, which had nothing to do
with the heroic symbols that surrounded them; but their affairs had
suddenly grown so serious that there was no want of decency in their
lingering there for the purpose. The implication that his visit might
remain as a secret between them made them both feel it differently. To
ask her to keep it so would have been, as it seemed to Ransom, a
liberty, and, moreover, he didn't care so much as that; but if she were
to prefer to do so such a preference would only make him consider the
more that his expedition had been a success.

"Oh, then, you can tell her this!" he said in a moment.

"If I shouldn't, it would be the first----" And Verena checked herself.

"You must arrange that with your conscience," Ransom went on, laughing.

They came out of the hall, passed down the steps, and emerged from the
Delta, as that portion of the college precinct is called. The afternoon
had begun to wane, but the air was filled with a pink brightness, and
there was a cool, pure smell, a vague breath of spring.