Don't fail to
stop off here on your way back. Answer. Carlotta."

Again she was at the station in her phaeton. Her first look, long before
I was near enough for speech, showed me how her mood had changed; but
she waited until we were clear of the town. "Forgive me," she then said
in the abrupt, direct manner which was the expression of her greatest
charm, her absolute honesty. "I've got the meanest temper in the world,
but it don't last, and as soon as you were gone I was ashamed of
myself."

"I don't understand why you are making these apologies," said I, "and I
don't understand why you were angry."

"That's what it means to be a man," she replied. "Your letter about your
mother made me furious. You hadn't ever urged me to hurry up the
wedding on your own account. And your letter made me feel as if, while
you personally didn't care whether we ever married or not, still for
your mother's sake you were willing to--to sacrifice yourself."

"Let me see my letter," said I.

"I tore it into a thousand pieces," said she. "But I don't mean that you
really wrote just that. You didn't. But you made me jealous of your
mother, and my temper got hold of me, and then I read the meanest kind
of things into and under and all round every word. And--I'm sorry."

I could find nothing to say. I saw my freedom slipping from me. I
watched it, sick at heart; yet, on the other hand, I neither tried nor
wished to detain it, though I could easily have made a renewal of our
engagement impossible. I have no explanation for this conflict of
emotions and motives.

"Don't make it so hard for me," she went on. "I never before in my life
told anybody I was sorry for anything, and I thought I never would. But
I _am_ sorry, and--we'll have the wedding the first day of August."

Still I found nothing to say. It was so painfully obvious that, true to
her training, she had not given and was not giving a thought to the
state of my mind and feelings. What _she_ wished, that she would do--the
rest did not interest her.

"Are you satisfied, my lord?" she demanded. "Have I humbled myself
sufficiently?"

"You haven't humbled yourself at all," said I. "You have only humbled
me."

She did not pause on my remark long enough to see what it meant. "Now
that it's all settled," she said gaily, "I don't mind telling you that I
began to make my preparations to be married on the first of
August--when, do you think?"

"When?" I said.

"The very day I got