sort. A sudden terror swept over him, terror of the future, of the deed
he was about to do, terror even of this strange and utterly unknown
woman whom he was about to make a part of his daily life, as long as
days existed. For a second he had an illusion that he had never seen,
never spoken to her before, and as he struggled against this queer
abnormality, he heard that in set, clear and not ill-chosen terms he was
asking her to marry him.

She clasped her hands together.

"Oh, it's just what I was trying to prevent."

"To prevent?"

"Burt, I've treated you so badly."

He looked at her without expression.

"Well, let's get the facts before we decide on that."

The facts, Cora intimated, were terrible. She was already engaged.

"To Lefferts?"

She nodded tragically.

Crane felt a strong inclination to laugh. The world took on a new
aspect. Reality returned with a rush, and with it a strong, friendly
affection for Cora. He hardly heard her long and passionate
self-justification. She knew, she said, that she had given him every
encouragement. Well, the truth was she had simply made up her mind to
marry him; nothing would have pleased her mother more, but she did not
intend to shelter herself behind obedience to her mother; she had
intended to do it for her own ends.

"That was what I tried to tell you last evening in the garden, Burt. I
deliberately schemed to marry you, but you mustn't think I did not like
and admire you, in a way--"

"There's only one way, Cora."

This sent her off again into the depths of self-abasement. She had no
excuse to offer, she kept protesting, and offered a dozen; the most
potent being her uncertainty of Crane's own feelings for her.

"You behaved so strangely for a man in love, Burt," she wailed, "I was
never sure."

"In the sense you mean, I was not in love with you, Cora."

"And yet, you want to marry me?"

"In your own words, I liked and admired you, but I was not in love. The
humiliating truth is, my dear girl, that I was so fatuous as to believe
that you were fond of me."

There was a short silence, and then Cora exclaimed candidly:

"Aren't people queer! Here I have been worrying myself sick over my
treatment of you, and now that I find you are not made unhappy by it, do
you know what I feel? Disappointed, disappointed somehow, that you don't
love me!"

Crane laughed.

"I also," he said, "have been slightly oppressed by the responsibility
of your fancied affe