ared.

"I should thing any girl might be permitted that much, in saying a
final good-bye to a man who had shown her a fine time for weeks," he
commented casually.

"But I didn't know I was saying good-bye," explained Kate. "I expected
him back in a week, and that I would then arrange to marry him. That
was the agreement we made then."

As she began to speak, George Holt's face flashed triumph at having led
her on; at what she said it fell perceptibly, but he instantly
controlled it and said casually: "In any event, it was your own
business."

"It was," said Kate. "I had given no man the slightest encouragement,
I was perfectly free. John Jardine was courting me openly in the
presence of his mother and any one who happened to be around. I
intended to marry him. I liked him as much as any man need be liked.
I don't know whether it was the same feeling Nancy Ellen had for Robert
Gray or not, but it was a whole lot of feeling of some kind. I was
satisfied with it, and he would have been. I meant to be a good wife
to him and a good daughter to his mother, and I could have done much
good in the world and extracted untold pleasure from the money he would
have put in my power to handle. All was going 'merry as a marriage
bell,' and then this morning came my Waterloo, in the same post with
your letter."

"Do you know what you are doing?" cried George Holt, roughly, losing
self-control with hope. "YOU ARE PROVING TO ME, AND ADMITTING TO
YOURSELF, THAT YOU NEVER LOVED THAT MAN AT ALL. You were flattered,
and tempted with position and riches, but your heart was not his, or
you would be mighty SURE of it, don't you forget that!"

"I am not interested in analyzing exactly what I felt for him," said
Kate. "It made small difference then; it makes none at all now. I
would have married him gladly, and I would have been to him all a good
wife is to any man; then in a few seconds I turned squarely against
him, and lost my respect for him. You couldn't marry me to him if he
were the last and only man on earth; but it hurt terribly, let me tell
you that!"

George Holt suddenly arose and went to Kate. He sat down close beside
her and leaned toward her.

"There isn't the least danger of my trying to marry you to him," he
said, "because I am going to marry you myself at the very first
opportunity. Why not now? Why not have a simple ceremony somewhere at
once, and go away until school begins, and forget him, having a