n't care about _anything_
else, she--"

"That's what Nancy said," remarked Oliver placidly out of his muffin.
"And then--"

"Well, you know I'm sorry for you--you know I'm just as sorry for you as
I can be," went on Elinor excitedly. "But all the same, my dear Ollie,
you have no right in the least to say that just because one girl has
broken her engagement with you, all girls are the same. I know dozens of
girls--" "So do I," from Oliver, quietly. "Dozens. And they're just the
same."

"They _aren't_. And I haven't the slightest wish to suggest that it was
_your_ fault, Oliver--but no girl as sweet and friendly and darling as
Nancy Ellicott, the little I knew of her that is, but other girls can
tell, and she certainly thought you were the person that made all the
stars come out in the sky and twinkle, would go and break her engagement
_entirely_ of her own accord--you _must_ have--"

And now Oliver looked at her with a good deal of sorrowful pity--she had
delivered herself so completely into his hands.

"I never said it was her fault, Elinor," he said gently, keeping the
laughter back by a superb effort of will. "It was mine, I am sure," and
then he added most sorrowfully, "All mine."

"_Well!_"

For a moment he forgot that he was there playing checkers with himself
and Elinor for Ted.

"You've never been through it, have you?" he said rather fiercely. "You
can't have--you couldn't talk like that if you had. When you've put
everything you've got in mind or body or soul completely in one person's
hands and then, just because of a silly misunderstanding we neither of
us meant--they drop it--and you drop with it and the next thing you
know you're nothing but a _mess_ and all you can wonder is if even the
littlest part of you will ever feel whole again--" He realized that he
was very nearly shouting, and then, suddenly, that if he kept on this
way the game was over and lost. He must think about Ted, not Nancy. Ted,
Ted. Mr. Theodore Billett, Jr.

"She'd forgiven me such a lot," he ended rather lamely. "I thought she'd
keep on."

But his outburst had only made Elinor feel the sorrier for him--he felt
like a burglar as he saw the kindness in her eyes.

"I don't imagine she ever had such an awful lot to forgive, Ollie," she
said gently.

Then the lie he had been leading up to all the way came at last,
magnificently hesitant.

"She had, Elinor. I was in France you know."

He was afraid when he had said it--it