IT was singular that though half an hour before he had not felt the want of the assurance he had just asked of her, yet now that he saw it definitely with held it took an importance as instantly as a mirror takes a reflection. This importance was so great that he found himself suddenly scared by what he heard. He thought an instant with intensity. “ In spite of knowing that you’ll disappoint ” he paused a little “the universal hope? ”

“I know whom I shall disappoint; but I must bear that. I shall disappoint Cousin Kate.”

“Horribly,” said Tony.

“Horribly.”

“And poor Paul to within an inch of his life.”

“No, not poor Paul, Mr. Bream; not poor Paul in the least,” Jean said. She spoke without a hint of defiance or the faintest ring of bravado, as if for mere veracity and lucidity, since an opportunity quite unsought had been forced upon her. “ I know about poor Paul. It’s all right about poor Paul,” she declared, smiling.

She spoke and she looked at him with a sincerity so distilled, as he felt, from something deep within her that to pretend to gainsay her would be in the worst taste. He turned about, not very brilliantly, as he was aware, to some other resource. “ You’ll immensely disappoint your own people.”

“Yes, my mother and my grandmother they both would like it. But they’ve never had any promise from me.”

Tony was silent awhile. “ And Mrs. Beever hasn’t she had? ”

“A promise? Never. I’ve known how much she has wanted it. But that’s all.”

“Ah, that’s a great deal,” said Tony. “If, knowing how much she has wanted it, you’ve come back again and again, hasn’t that been tantamount to giving it? ”

Jean considered. “ I shall never come back again.”

“Ah, my dear child, what a way to treat us!” her friend broke out.

She took no notice of this; she only went on: “ Months ago the last time I was here an assurance, of a kind, was asked of me. But even then I held off.”

“And you’ve gone on with that intention? ” He had grown so serious now that he cross-questioned her, but she met him with a promptitude that was touching in its indulgence. “ I’ve gone on without an intention. I’ve only waited to see, to feel, to judge. The great thing seemed to me to be sure I wasn’t unfair to Paul. I haven’t been I’m not unfair. He’ll never say I’ve been I’m sure he won’t. I should have liked to be able to become his wife. But I can’t.”

“You’ve nevertheless excited hopes,” said Tony. “Don’t you think you ought to consider that a little more?” His uneasiness, his sense of the unex pected, as sharp as a physical pang, increased so that he began to lose sight of the importance of concealing it; and he went on even while something came into her eyes that showed he had not concealed it. “ If you haven’t meant not to do it, you’ve, so far as that goes, meant the opposite. Therefore something has made you change.”

Jean hesitated. “ Everything has made me change.”

“Well,” said Tony, with a smile so strained that he felt it almost pitiful, “ we’ve spoken of the dis appointment to others, but I suppose there’s no use in my attempting to say anything of the disappoint ment to me. That’s not the thing that, in such a case, can have much effect on you.”

Again Jean hesitated: he saw how pale she had grown. “Do I understand you tell me that you really desire my marriage? ”

If the revelation of how he desired it had not already come to him the deep mystery of her beauty at this crisis might have brought it on the spot a spectacle in which he so lost himself for the minute that he found no words to answer till she spoke again. “ Do I understand that you literally ask me for it? ”

“I ask you for it I ask you for it,” said Tony Bream.

They stood looking at each other like a pair who, walking on a frozen lake, suddenly have in their ears the great crack of the ice. “ And what are your reasons? ”

“I’ll tell you my reasons when you tell me yours for having changed.”

“I’ve not changed,” said Jean.

It was as if their eyes were indissolubly engaged. That was the way he had been looking a while before into another woman’s, but he could think at this moment of the exquisite difference of Jean’s. He shook his head with all the sadness and all the tenderness he felt he might permit himself to show just this once and never again. “ You’ve changed you’ve changed.”

Then she gave up. “ Wouldn’t you much rather I should never come back? ”

“Far rather. But you will come back,” said Tony.

She looked away from him at last turned her eyes over the place in which she had known none but emotions permitted and avowed, and again seemed to yield to the formidable truth. “ So you think I had better come back so different? ”

His tenderness broke out into a smile. “As different as possible. As different as that will be just all the difference,” he added.

She appeared, with her averted face, to consider intently how much “ all ” might in such a case prac tically amount to. But “ Here he comes ” was what she presently replied.

Paul Beever was in sight, so freshly dressed that even at a distance his estimate of the requirements of the occasion was visible from his necktie to his boots. Adorned as it unmistakably had never been, his great featureless person moved solemnly over the lawn.

“Take him then take him!” said Tony Bream.

Jean, intensely serious but with agitation held at bay, gave him one more look, a look so infinitely pacific that as, at Paul’s nearer approach, he turned away from her, he had the sense of going off with a sign of her acceptance of his solution. The light in her face was the light of the compassion that had come out to him, and what was that compassion but the gage of a relief, of a promise? It made him walk down to the river with a step quickened to exhilaration; all the more that as the girl’s eyes followed him he couldn’t see in them the tragic intelligence he had kindled, her perception from the very rhythm of the easy gait she had watched so often that he really thought such a virtual confession to her would be none too lavishly repaid by the effort for which he had appealed.

Paul Beever had in his hand his little morocco case, but his glance also rested, till it disappeared, on Tony’s straight and swinging back. “ I’ve driven him away,” he said.

“It was time,” Jean replied. “ Effie, who wasn’t ready for me, must really come at last.” Then without the least pretence of unconscious............