ch in his hand.

"I didn't know I had been," she replied, glancing up to the open
candour of his eyes.

"But you have. I was going to write to you."

"You were?"

"Yes; I'm not much of a hand at it, but I was going to make a shot.
I was going to ask you if you--if you were preferring--oh--you
understand what I mean--if you didn't like my thrusting my attentions
on you--well--as I--as I had been doing. I was going to write that
to-night."

She looked up with wide eyes--the eyes that Traill had first
loved--but she said nothing.

"Well?" he asked, pressing her to the answer. "What would have been
your reply?"

"I really don't know," she said honestly.

"You don't care for me?" he exclaimed. "I'm not the sort of chap
who--"

"Oh, it's not that!"

"Then, what?"

She met his eyes steadily. "It's--am I the sort of woman?"

He came close to her side, took her hand reverently as though its
preciousness made him fear the harm his heavy grip might do. And there,
under the network of apple branches interwoven with the patches of
a deep, blue sky, with now and then the sound of an apple tumbling
heavily to the ground, or a flight of starlings whirring overhead,
and in the distance the hollow monotonous beating on the tin drums
of the boy who scared the birds, he told her roughly, unevenly, in
words cut out of the solid vein of his emotion, what kind of a woman
he thought she was.

"No," she kept on whispering; "no, no."

But he paid no attention. He scarcely heard the word in the gentleness
of her voice. When he had finished, she took away her hand.

"That means nothing to you, then?" he said bitterly.

She gazed away through the lines of apple trees that hid the greater
distance from view.

"It means more than you think," she replied. "But I can't let you
say it--I can't let you continue to think it, until--until"--she took
a deep breath--"until I tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"I'll write to you."

"But you can tell me. Why can't you tell me?" His lips were white.
The little switch snapped in his fingers. Neither of them noticed
it. Neither heard the sound. "Why can't you tell me?" he repeated.

"I can't, that is all. After what you've said--after what you've been
so generous to tell me that you thought of me, I--couldn't. I'll write
it."

He threw the pieces of the switch away into the grass.

"You're going to be married?" he muttered. "You're in love, you're
engaged to some one else?"

"No, no,