ut gradually that she
became pacified. A struggle was going on within her between these doubts
of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his
pleadings. Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the
lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness.

"You'd better let me out here," she said. "You can't drive me home."

He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters
built for the convenience of passengers.

"You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked.

"Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to
him. "I--I forgive you. I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like
that. I'm horrid and I can't help it." She began to unbutton the coat he
had bought for her.

"Aren't you going to take it?" he said. "It's yours."

"And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar
had given it to me?"

"Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that
we're going to be married," he announced recklessly.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation. "You couldn't. You said so
yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now. I'll get on the
trolley."

"And the roses?" he asked.

She pressed them to her face, and chose one. "I'll take this," she said,
laying the rest on the seat....

He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove
slowly homeward in a state of amazement. He had been on the verge of
announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective
husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he
found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And
the ever-recurring question presented itself--was he prepared to go that
length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she
was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him
intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his
children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in
spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty.

When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the
wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she
had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the
back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed
emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love....

The weeks that immediat