“I thought you were Laura Devereux, and that day when you didn’t come I went for you and saw you and Vincent on the porch. And afterwards he told me he was engaged to Miss Devereux, and――don’t you see what it meant to me? And yesterday I found out, quite by accident, and――” he reached across and seized her hand with a little laugh of sheer happiness――“I haven’t slept a wink since! I――I thought I’d never get here; the roads were quagmires!” “Oh, why did you come?” she asked miserably. “Why? Good Heaven, don’t you know, girl?” He leaned across and she felt his lips on the hand still clasped in his. “Yes, yes, I know,” she cried. “But――you mustn’t love me! You won’t when I’ve told you!” “Try me!” he said softly. “I’m going to. But――I can’t if you have my hand.” “If I let it go may I have it again?” he asked playfully. “You won’t want it,” was the grim answer. “When you know what I am really, you――won’t want――ever to see me――again.” “That’s nonsense,” he answered stoutly. But a qualm of uneasiness oppressed him. She moved away from the counter until she was out of reach of his impatient hands. [Illustration] “I meant you to fall in love with me,” she said evenly, looking at him with wide eyes and white face. “I meant you to propose to me. I wanted to――to marry you.” He reached impetuously toward her with a smothered word of endearment, but she held up a hand. “Wait! You don’t understand! I――I didn’t care for you. I was tired of being poor and――and of this!” She swept her glance about the bare and silent library. “We used to have money,” she went on, speaking rapidly. “We lived in Ohio then, when father was alive. Then I came east to college. I met Laura there. We were friends almost at once, although she was in the class ahead of me. I never finished, for my father died and left us almost without a cent. I left college and Laura’s father secured me work here. I studied hard and last year they made me librarian. Then mother came east to live here with me. Laura was always kind. When my vacation came I went to visit her there at The Larches. Then you――I met you.” She paused and dropped her gaze. “Yes,” he said softly. “And then?” “You said you had some property and you――you seemed nice and kind. I was so weary of it all. I wanted――oh, you know? I wanted to have money, enough to live decently somewhere else than here in this tomb they call a town. I didn’t care. I set out to make you――like me. I went back there to the pool each day for just that, until――――” [Illustration] “Well? Until?” he urged, smiling across at her. “That is all,” she answered. “And it was all absolutely mercenary? You never cared for me?” “I’ve told you,” she answered. “And――that last day, dear? It was the same? You didn’t care then either?” “Oh, what does it matter what happened afterwards?” she cried agitatedly. “It was what I had done, don’t you see? It was the meanness, the――the shamefulness of it!” “Well, but this ‘afterward’? What of that?”