ess for an answer. Instead, very
softly he whistled the air of a song that he had been wont to sing
to her half in jest in the old days.

Love that hath us in the net
Can he pass and we forget?

She made a little movement of flinching, but the next moment she
turned back to him with absolute steadfastness. "Guy, you and I
are friends, aren't we? We never could be anything else."

"Oh, couldn't we?" said Guy.

"No," she maintained resolutely. "Please let us remember that!
Please let us build on that!"

He looked at her whimsically. "It's a shaky foundation," he said.
"But we'll try. That is, we'll pretend if you like. Who knows?
We may succeed."

"Don't put it like that!" she said. "Be a man, Guy! I know you
can be. Only yesterday----"

"Yesterday? What happened yesterday?" said Guy. "I never remember
the yesterdays."

"I think you do," she said. "You did a big thing yesterday. You
saved Burke."

"Oh, that!" He uttered a low laugh. "My dear girl, don't canonize
me on that account! I only did it because those swine wanted to see
him burn."

She shuddered. "That is not true. You know it is not true. It
pleases you to pretend you are callous. But you are not at heart.
Burke knows that as well as I do,"

"Oh, damn Burke!" he said airly. "He's no great oracle. I wonder
what you'd have said if I had come back without him."

She clenched her hands hard to keep back another shudder. "I can't
talk of that--can't think of it even. You don't know--you will
never realize--all that Burke has done for me."

"Yes, I do know," Guy said. "But most men would have jumped at the
chance to do the same. You take it all too seriously. It was no
sacrifice to him. You don't owe him anything. He wouldn't have
done it if he hadn't taken a fancy to you. And he didn't do it for
nothing either. He's not such a philanthropist as that."

Somehow that hurt her intolerably. She looked at him with a quick
flash of anger in her eyes. "Do you want to make me hate you?" she
said.

He turned instantly and with a most winning gesture. "No, darling.
You couldn't if you tried," he said.

She went back a step, shaking her head. "I am not so sure," she
said. "Why do you say these horrible things to me?"

He held out his hand to her. "I'm awfully sorry, dear," he said.
"But it is for your good. I want you to see life as it is, not as
your dear little imagination is pleased to paint it. You are so