dices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I
came." His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his
voice uncertain. "I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who
could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find
me very faithful to a hope--which, in fact, to relinquish now would be
beyond what I can expect of my courage." He resumed bluffness. "I told
Vincent he might look for my return to-morrow."

"No, sir!" she came out with lively directness. "You're not going back
to Leghorn if I can help it! I--I have a plan."

"You have a plan? From your face I am afraid not a good one. You look so
dubious."

"Perhaps it isn't a good one, but it's the only way I can see. Listen."
She looked down at her hands, and kept him waiting. "One evening last
winter at a party a young Italian naval officer got talking to me in a
green bower under a pink paper lantern away from the rest. Something in
the atmosphere, I guess, made him want to talk to somebody of his
love-affairs, and he chose me, though we scarcely knew each other. He
told me he had been very much in love with an American girl, but they
hadn't the money to marry on or the hope of ever having it--like Brenda
and Manlio at first. Yet they couldn't keep apart, and so they just
became engaged, knowing it couldn't end as an engagement is supposed to
do. In that way they could see each other all they wanted, and be seen
together without anybody making a remark. And then when she was obliged
to go home and it had to end, it looked merely like a broken
engagement."

"And you propose--"

"We might try it, Gerald. Then if it didn't work well, if I found I was
all the time outraging your sensibilities, and you hurting my feelings,
we'd call it off. In any case we'd give ourselves plenty of time to
realize our foolishness. And you'd promise that when the time came you'd
go like a lamb, with a pleasant face, not saving up anything against me.
Make up your mind, now, that it'll have to be a long, _long_
engagement--if we don't repent and break it off inside a week. But as it
seems so likely we will, let's don't tell the others right off, Gerald;
not, anyhow, for a week or ten days."

"Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever
came from fair lady so well brought up as you!" cried Gerald, in a
proper state of excitement. But yet, such were his limitations, nothing
in any proportion with the throbbing fire inside h