said Mark; 'the book will be forgotten with the next
literary sensation, and I shall drop under with it. You will see me
about less often, till one day you pass me in the street and wonder
who I am, and if you ever met me at all.'

'I don't think I ever gave you the right to say that,' she said,
wounded at his tone, 'and you ought to know that I should not do
anything of the sort.'

'Will you tell me this,' he said, and his voice trembled with anxiety,
'if--if I had not written this book which was happy enough to give you
some pleasure--if I had met you simply as Mark Ashburn, a man who had
never written a line in his life, would you have been the same to me?
Would you have felt even such interest in me as I like to think
sometimes you do feel? Try to give me an answer.... You don't know how
much it will mean to me.'

Mabel took refuge in the impersonal. 'Of course,' she said, 'one often
likes a person one never saw very much for something he has done; but
I think if you ever do meet him and then don't like him for himself,
you dislike him all the more for disappointing you. It's a kind of
reaction, I suppose.'

'Tell me this too,' Mark entreated, 'is--is that _my_ case?'

'If it had been,' she said softly, 'do you think I should have said
that?'

Something in her tone gave Mark courage to dare everything.

'Then you do care for me a little?' he cried. 'Mabel, I can speak now.
I loved you ever since I first saw you in that old country church. I
never meant to tell you so soon, but I can't help it. I want you--I
can't live without you! Will you come to me, Mabel?'

She put both hands trustfully in his as she said, 'Yes, Mark,' and
without any more words just then on either side, their troth was
plighted. He was still holding the hands she had resigned to him,
hardly daring as yet to believe in this realisation of his dearest
hopes, when someone stepped quickly in through the light curtains. It
was Caffyn, and he put up his eyeglass to conceal a slight start as he
saw who were there.

'Sent to look for somebody's fan; told it was left on the folding
chair. Ah, sorry to trouble you, Ashburn; that's it behind you; I
won't say I found you sitting on it.' And he went out with his prize.

'I think, after that,' said Mabel, with a little laugh, though she was
annoyed too, 'you had better take me back again.'

And Mark obeyed, feeling that the unromantic interruption had
effectually broken the spell. Fortunately it