uch as we can."

"I can't do that," answered Patty simply. "I am not made that way. I
pour everything into one thought."

"I know," responded Corinna sadly, and she did. She had lived through it
all long ago in what seemed to her now another life.

For a moment she was silent; and when she spoke again there was an
anxious sound in her voice and an anxious look in the eyes she lifted to
the arching boughs of the sycamore. "Do you like Stephen very much,
Patty?" she asked.

Though Corinna did not see it, a glow that was like the flush of dawn
broke over the girl's sensitive face. "He is so superior," she began as
if she were repeating a phrase she had learned to speak; then in a low
voice she added impulsively, "Oh, very much!"

"He is a dear boy," returned Corinna, really troubled. "Do you see him
often?" Now, since she felt she had won the girl's confidence, her
purpose appeared more difficult than ever.

"Very often," replied Patty in a thrilling tone. "He comes every day."
The luminous candour, the fearless sincerity of Gideon Vetch, seemed to
envelop her as she answered.

"Do you think he cares for you, dear?" asked Corinna softly.

"Oh, yes." The response was unhesitating. "I know it."

How naive, how touchingly ingenuous, the girl was in spite of her
experience of life and of the uglier side of politicians. No girl in
Corinna's circle would ever have appeared so confiding, so innocent, so
completely beneath the spell of a sentimental illusion. The girls that
Corinna knew might be unguarded about everything else on earth; but even
the most artless one of them, even Margaret Blair, would have learned by
instinct to guard the secret of her emotions.

"Has he asked you to marry him?" Corinna's voice wavered over the
question, which seemed to her cruel; but Patty met it with transparent
simplicity.

"Not yet," she answered, lifting her shining eyes to the sky, "but he
will. How can he help it when he cares for me so much?"

"If he hasn't yet, my dear"--while the words dropped from her reluctant
lips, Corinna felt as if she were inflicting a physical stab,--"how can
you tell that he cares so much for you?"

"I wasn't sure until yesterday," replied Patty, with beaming lucidity,
"but I knew yesterday because--because he showed it so plainly."

With a lovely protective movement the older woman put her arm about the
girl's shoulders. "You may be right--but, oh, don't trust too much,
Patty," she pleaded, with