one of us, and had been damaged
by her confession. The gray night coming down over the country was kind
to her; and she thought that one of these days she would find comfort
in sitting upon the earth, alone, beneath a tree. Looking through the
darkness, she marked the swelling ground and the tree. Ralph made her
start by saying abruptly;

"What I was going to say when we were interrupted at lunch was that if
you go to America I shall come, too. It can't be harder to earn a living
there than it is here. However, that's not the point. The point is,
Mary, that I want to marry you. Well, what do you say?" He spoke firmly,
waited for no answer, and took her arm in his. "You know me by this
time, the good and the bad," he went on. "You know my tempers. I've
tried to let you know my faults. Well, what do you say, Mary?"

She said nothing, but this did not seem to strike him.

"In most ways, at least in the important ways, as you said, we know each
other and we think alike. I believe you are the only person in the world
I could live with happily. And if you feel the same about me--as you do,
don't you, Mary?--we should make each other happy." Here he paused,
and seemed to be in no hurry for an answer; he seemed, indeed, to be
continuing his own thoughts.

"Yes, but I'm afraid I couldn't do it," Mary said at last. The casual
and rather hurried way in which she spoke, together with the fact
that she was saying the exact opposite of what he expected her to say,
baffled him so much that he instinctively loosened his clasp upon her
arm and she withdrew it quietly.

"You couldn't do it?" he asked.

"No, I couldn't marry you," she replied.

"You don't care for me?"

She made no answer.

"Well, Mary," he said, with a curious laugh, "I must be an arrant fool,
for I thought you did." They walked for a minute or two in silence,
and suddenly he turned to her, looked at her, and exclaimed: "I don't
believe you, Mary. You're not telling me the truth."

"I'm too tired to argue, Ralph," she replied, turning her head away from
him. "I ask you to believe what I say. I can't marry you; I don't want
to marry you."

The voice in which she stated this was so evidently the voice of one in
some extremity of anguish that Ralph had no course but to obey her. And
as soon as the tone of her voice had died out, and the surprise faded
from his mind, he found himself believing that she had spoken the truth,
for he had but little vanity, and so