nger that was incarnate
in Million's little face as we walked along.

I positively gasped over the--well, there's nothing for it but to call
it the distaste and dislike of the one in which she pronounced those
three words: "That Mr. Burke."

"Whatcher looking so surprised at?" she asked.

"You," I said. "Why--only yesterday you told me that you were so
much--that you liked Mr. Burke so much!"

"Yesterday. O' course," said Million. "Yesterday I hadn't been put wise
to the sort of games he was up to!"

"But----You liked him enough to say you--you were ready to marry him!"

"Yes! And there'd have been a nice thing," retorted the indignant
Million. "Fancy if I had a married him. A man like that, who stuffed me
up with all those fairy tales! A nice sort of husband for anybody! I
can't be grateful enough to Hiram for telling me."

I was too puzzled to say anything. I could only give little gasps at
intervals.

"Isn't it a mercy," said Miss Million with real fervour, "that I found
him out in time? Why ever d'you look at me like that? It is a mercy,
isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. Only I'm so surprised at your thinking so," I
hesitated. "You see, as you really liked Mr. Burke----"

"Well, but I couldn't go on likin' him after I found him out. How could
I?" demanded Million briskly. "Would any girl?"

I said: "I should have thought so. I can imagine a girl who, if she
really cared for a man, would go on caring----"

"After she found out the sort he was?"

"Yes. She might be very unhappy to find out. But it wouldn't make any
other difference----"

"What?" cried Million, looking almost scandalised. "I don't believe you
can mean what you say!"

"I do mean what I say," I persisted, as we walked along. "I think that
if one really cared for a man, the 'caring' would go on, whatever one
found him out in. He might be a murderer. Or a forger. Or he might be in
the habit of making love to every pretty woman he saw. Or--or anything
bad that one can think of. And one might want to give up being fond of
him. But one wouldn't be able to. I shouldn't."

"Ah, well, there's just the difference between you and I," said Miss
Million, in such a brisk, practical, matter-of-fact voice that one could
hardly realise that it belonged to the girl whose eyes had grown so
dreamy as she had spoken, only yesterday, of the Honourable Jim.

"Now, I'm like this. If I like a person, I like 'em. I'd stick to
anybody through thick and thin.