u
don't,' he added with a smile, 'regard me as an irresponsible person,
whose feeble remarks are to be received with kind allowance?'

'No, I did not mean that.'

He gazed at her, and his face showed a growing trouble.

'You do not take too seriously what I said just now about the weakness
of my mind? It would be horrible if you thought I had worked myself into
a state of amiable imbecility, and was incapable henceforth of acting,
thinking, or speaking with a sound intellect. Tell me, say in plain
words that is not your way of interpreting me.'

He had become very much in earnest. Raising himself to a position in
which he rested on one hand, lie looked straight into her face.

'Why don't you reply? Why don't you speak?'

'Because, Mr. Athel, it is surely needless to say that I have no such
thought.'

'No, it is not needless; and even now you speak in a way which troubles
me. Do not look away from me. What has my aunt told you about me?'

She turned her face to him. Her self-command was so complete that not a
throb of her leaping heart betrayed itself in vein or muscle. She even
met his eyes with a placid gaze which he felt as a new aspect of her
countenance.

'Mrs. Rossall has never spoken to me of your health,' she said.

'But my father's jokes; he has a way of humorous exaggeration. You of
course understand that; you don't take seriously all he says?'

'I think I can distinguish between jest and earnest.'

'For all that, you speak of the recovery of my health as if I were still
far from the wholly rational stand-point. So far from my being mentally
unsound, this rest has been a growing-time with me. Before, I did
nothing but heap my memory with knowledge of hooks; now I have had
leisure to gather knowledge of a deeper kind. I was a one-sided
academical monster; it needed this new sense to make me human. The old
college life is no longer my ideal; I doubt if it will be possible. At
any rate, I shall hurry over the rest of my course as speedily as may
be, that I may begin really to live. You must credit what I am saying; I
want you to give me distinct assurance that you do so. If I have the
least doubt, it will trouble my mind in earnest.'

Miss Hood rose to her feet in that graceful effortless way of which
girls have the secret.

'You attribute a meaning to my words that I never thought of,' she said,
again in the distant respectful manner.

Wilfrid also rose.

'And you give me credit for understand