“Aren’t you a――well, just a weeny bit inquisitive?” she asked smilingly. “It may sound so,” he acknowledged, “but, you see, it means a good deal to me; it’s rather important.” [Illustration] “Important?” she repeated wonderingly. “Yes, you see――――” But of course he couldn’t explain why it was important. So he floundered helplessly a moment. “Yes――that is――well, they are very good friends of mine, Vin especially, and――” “Oh, you feared perhaps I wasn’t a proper person for them to know?” “Good heaven, no!” “Then I don’t see――――!” “I don’t blame you,” he said discouragedly. “Really, I was only talking nonsense. I――I thought that if you knew them well, and I knew them well, then we――we might know each other well!” She gazed at him sorrowfully a moment. Then she shook her head disappointedly. “No,” she said, “no, that wasn’t at all what you meant. I suppose even studying for the law has its effect.” He laughed embarrassedly. “May I see what you are reading?” he asked. She lifted the volume from her lap, gravely took a folded handkerchief from between the leaves where it had been doing duty as a mark, and handed him the book. “I’m sorry you can’t trust me,” he laughed. “So am I,” was the regretful response. “It is terrible to have a friend both a――a prevaricator and a――a――a――――” “Embezzler,” he suggested helpfully. “Yes, it is bad. ‘Love Sonnets from the Portuguese,’” he continued, reading the title. “May I ask if you were going to take this to church with you?” “I hadn’t thought of it. I suppose, like most men, you consider them silly and sentimental,” she challenged. He shook his head. “Sweet and sentimental, rather,” he replied. “You could hardly be expected to care for them, I suppose,” she said. “Your tastes, if I recollect aright, run rather toward ‘The Ingoldsby Legends’!” “That is indeed unkind,” he murmured sorrowfully. “No, I am very fond of these, this one especially; if it were not Sunday I would read it.” “What has Sunday got to do with it?” she asked. “Perhaps nothing,” was the reply. “I dare say it is only my Puritanism cropping out. You know we New Englanders find it very difficult to reconcile pleasure with religion. I can fancy the ghost of my great-great-great-grandfather, in sugar-loaf hat and with beruffed neck, standing over there in the shadows, holding his hands aloft in holy horror at the sight of me sitting here on Sunday morning with a volume of love-poems in my hands.” “What nonsense!” she cried indignantly. “Isn’t love just as holy as――as anything? Isn’t――――” She stopped abruptly and Ethan, lifting his head, found her gazing toward him with something almost like horror in her wide eyes. “What is it?” he cried anxiously. She shook her head and dropped her gaze to the hands folded on her knees. “Nothing,” she said very quietly. She laughed softly, uncertainly. “Will you give me my book, please?” she asked.