ng he had come to with
Alma was only the explicit formulation of terms long tacit between them.
Beaton would have been puzzled more than he knew if she had taken him
seriously. It was inevitable that he should declare himself in love with
her; but he was not disappointed at her rejection of his love; perhaps
not so much as he would have been at its acceptance, though he tried to
think otherwise, and to give himself airs of tragedy. He did not really
feel that the result was worse than what had gone before, and it left him
free.

But he did not go to the Leightons again for so long a time that Mrs.
Leighton asked Alma what had happened. Alma told her.

"And he won't come any more?" her mother sighed, with reserved censure.

"Oh, I think he will. He couldn't very well come the next night. But he
has the habit of coming, and with Mr. Beaton habit is everything--even
the habit of thinking he's in love with some one."

"Alma," said her mother, "I don't think it's very nice for a girl to let
a young man keep coming to see her after she's refused him."

"Why not, if it amuses him and doesn't hurt the girl?"

"But it does hurt her, Alma. It--it's indelicate. It isn't fair to him;
it gives him hopes."

"Well, mamma, it hasn't happened in the given case yet. If Mr. Beaton
comes again, I won't see him, and you can forbid him the house."

"If I could only feel sure, Alma," said her mother, taking up another
branch of the inquiry, "that you really knew your own mind, I should be
easier about it."

"Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma. I do know my own mind; and,
what's worse, I know Mr. Beaton's mind."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that he spoke to me the other night simply because Mr.
Fulkerson's engagement had broken him all up."

"What expressions!" Mrs. Leighton lamented.

"He let it out himself," Alma went on. "And you wouldn't have thought it
was very flattering yourself. When I'm made love to, after this, I prefer
to be made love to in an off-year, when there isn't another engaged
couple anywhere about."

"Did you tell him that, Alma?"

"Tell him that! What do you mean, mamma? I may be indelicate, but I'm not
quite so indelicate as that."

"I didn't mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, but I wanted to warn
you. I think Mr. Beaton was very much in earnest."

"Oh, so did he!"

"And you didn't?"

"Oh yes, for the time being. I suppose he's very much in earnest with
Miss Vance at times, and with M