her hand from his
fierce clasp and restoring it to his arm.

"We must not stop," she said. "I hear a horse behind us. It is somebody
going to the party, perhaps."

He said nothing as her fingers left his, and they walked on again. It
was a horse and a buggy containing a couple from the village. Tilly
spoke merrily to them and they answered back as they dashed on.

"It is Marietta Slocum and Fred Murray," Tilly explained. "They are
engaged."

"Engaged?" The word seemed to fill the entire consciousness of the crude
social anomaly. He told himself that an engagement must naturally
precede marriage, and how was that to come about with that helpless
tongue in his mouth? Besides, how did he know but that Tilly might
refuse him? How did he know but that there might even now be some
understanding between her and Eperson? The sheer thought chilled him
like a blast from a cavern of ice. She seemed to feel the limpness of
the arm she held or in some way to sense the despair that was on him so
quickly following the mood she had interrupted only a moment before.

"You are so strange!" she sighed, taking a better grasp on his arm, and
even bearing down on it slightly as she lowered her head thoughtfully.
"You are a mystery to me. I can't make you out."

He could not explain. He was not sure that he cared to explain the
terrible internal quakings which to him seemed so unmanly, so unlike any
feelings that had ever come to him. He wondered if Eperson had actually
spoken open words of love to her, and, if so, how had the fellow, with
all his suave ability, managed it?

Another buggy passed. Tilly explained who the occupants of it were after
she had greeted them. They were George Whitton and Ella Bell Roberts.
Then she added, with a touch of seriousness:

"You ought to have lifted your hat just now."

"Lifted my hat? Why, I don't know her-- I've never seen her before!" he
retorted, with the irritation of a great mind descending to a
triviality.

"Because he lifted his to me and you are with me," Tilly persisted in
her mild rebuke. "It is the custom here, but it may not be at
Ridgeville."

John was chagrined, but determined to hide it. "I have never heard of a
man bowing to a man or a woman he never saw before," he fumed. "I don't
care what you all do; it is foolishness out and out."

"Well, when you are in Rome," Tilly quoted in quite a grave tone, "you
ought to do as the Romans do."

The thing rankled within him. The b