d me the others;
"if the flap side turns up, I'll destroy it."

She sent it spinning into the air. A branch caught and held it an
instant, then it fell, turning over and over, and lay straight on edge
against a weed.

"No decision!" I cried. "It's an exact perpendicular."

She knelt beside it, pondering. "I think it leans just a trifle to the
address side," she announced. "Therefore you may return it to your
pocket and it goes into the post-office."

"These letters would probably answer a lot of questions for me if I
dared run away with them," I suggested.

"The thought does you no credit, sir. You promised not to meddle, but
just to let things take their course, and I must say that you are
constantly improving. At times you grow suspicious--yes, you know you
do--but, take it all in all, you do very well."

At the post-office she dropped all the letters but one into the chute.
"It really _did_ fall a little to the address side?" she questioned.

I gave my judgment that the letter stood straight on edge, inclining
neither way.

"If my life hung in the balance, I should certainly not act where fate
had been so timid."

"Perhaps this _does_ affect you," she said, quite soberly. And there in
the lobby of the little Barton post-office, for the first time, I
indulged the hope that there was something more than friendliness and
kindness in her eyes. Her usual composure was gone--for a moment
only--and she fingered the envelope nervously in her slim, expressive
hands. A young woman clerk thrust her head through the delivery window
and manifested a profound interest in our colloquy.

"Suppose," said Alice musingly, "I were to tell you that if I mail this
letter the effect will be to detain me in America for some time; if I
don't send it, I shall have to write another that will mean that I shall
go very soon. If I stay on at Barton instead of going home to take up my
little part again for England in the war, it will be an act of
selfishness--just some more of my foolishness, more of the make-believe
life that Constance and I have been living here."

"I want you to stay," I said earnestly, taking the letter. "Let me be
your fate in this--in everything that affects your life forever."

She walked quickly to the door, and I dropped the letter into the chute
and hurried after her.

"You didn't turn round," I said as we started down the street. "For all
you know, I've got the letter in my pocket."

"Oh, I'm not a bit