the hearth together. "This room is cold. I must build the fire
up.... Yes, it's true.... The wood is too green to burn. I'll order from
another man next time.... I suppose I've been in love with her for a
good while. I wonder if it began that night Jacky was sick ... and she
kissed me? No; it must have been before that." He stooped and mended the
fire, piling the logs together with slow exactness: "What life might
have been!" He took up the bellows and urged a little flame to rise and
flicker and lap the wood, then burst to crackling blaze. After a while
he said, "Poor Nelly!" But he had himself in hand by that time, and,
though this terrifying knowledge was surging in him, he knew that his
voice would not betray him. He went upstairs to comfort her with kindly
assurances that she was wrong. ("More lies," he thought, wearily.)

But apparently she didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hair
before the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, and
violent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with either
good-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand.
But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he found
it quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, and
say, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a nice thing to say!"

She did not meet his eyes in the mirror; she only said (she was
trembling), "I suppose it wasn't."

Maurice was puzzled, but he said, casually, that he was sorry to have to
rush off that night. "I've got to take the Limited for St. Louis. Mr.
Weston wants some papers put through. I hate to leave you."

She made no answer.

"I shall be gone a week, maybe more; because if I don't pull the
chestnut out of the fire in St. Louis, I'll have to go to some other
places."

She hardly heard him; she was saying to herself: "I _oughtn't_ to have
told him she was in love with him; it may make him think so, himself!"

"Guess I'll pack my grip now," he said.

"Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "I didn't mean--" She was so
frightened that she couldn't finish her sentence; but he said, with
kindly understanding:

"Of course you didn't!"

It flashed into her mind that if she left him alone, he would know that
what she had said was so meaningless that she didn't think it worth
talking about. "I--I'm going to Auntie's to dinner," she told him, on
the spur of the moment. "Do you mind?"

"No; of course not. Wait a second, and I'll walk round