er contemplation of the stars, a hand on
each side grasping the low rail against which she leaned. The spangles
on a scarf over her bare shoulders glittered iridescently in the light
streaming from her room. Of Thor she could discern little more than the
whiteness of his face and of his evening shirt-front from the obscurity
in which he kept himself. A minute or more elapsed before she went on.

"You see, Thor, I didn't fall in love with you first of all for your own
sake; it was because--because I thought you'd fallen in love with me.
That's a sort of confession, isn't it? It may be something I ought to be
ashamed of, and perhaps I am--a little. But you'd understand how it
could happen if you were to realize what it was to me that a man should
fall in love with me at all."

He tried to interrupt her, but she insisted on going on in her own way.
"I wasn't attractive. I never had been. During the years when I was
going out I never received what people call attentions--not from any
one. I don't say that I didn't suffer on account of it. I did--but I'd
begun to take the suffering philosophically. I'd made up my mind that no
one would ever care for me, and I was getting used to the
idea--when--when you came."

Because her voice trembled she pressed her handkerchief against her
lips, while Thor stood silent in the darkness of the far end of the
balcony.

"And when you did come, Thor dear, it couldn't but seem to me the most
amazing thing that ever happened. I didn't allow myself to think that
you were in love with me--I didn't dare--at first. It made me happy that
you should think it worth while just to come and see me, to talk to me,
to tell me some of the things you hoped to do. That in itself--"

She broke off again, losing something of her self-command. In the stress
of physical agitation she drew the spangled scarf over her shoulders and
stepped forward into the shaft of light that fell through the open
French window of her room.

"But, finally, Thor, I came to the conclusion that you must love me. I
couldn't explain your kindness in any other way. Believe me, I didn't
accept that way till--till it seemed the only one, but when I did, well,
it wasn't merely pride and happiness that I felt--it was something
more." A sob in her throat obliged her to interrupt herself again, while
the croaking of frogs continued. "And so, Thor dear, love came to me,
too. It came because I thought you brought it; but now that I see yo