She sat down on the nearest stone feeling just a little dizzy, and clasping her hands across her knees stared out at the pale blue misty valley, and the pale blue winter sky beyond. "But why should you want something to remember me by?" she said slowly. "I shall always remember you without anything." Her freedom from conventional cloakings in speech was at all times a trifle disconcerting, and he felt inclined to reply "That is very kind of you," or make some other banal remark of the sort which might bring convention back. Then he cursed himself for a low beast, and followed her unconsciousness as closely as he could. "Perhaps I wanted to remember the exact words you said," he suggested. "But you do remember them," she answered aggrievedly; "that is what I complain of. You remember every little thing I say--and it is most uncomfortable. I cannot think why you should." He took his fate in his hand. "Can't you--I can----. It is because I happen to love you." She sat still for a second, then turned and looked at him with narrowing eyes. "I don't see what that has to do with it! You knew what I was thinking about the very first time we met, and you could not possibly have been in love with me then." Her seriousness made him laugh outright. It was the most delicious piece of comedy to be sitting there talking of his love as if it did not belong to him, while his pulses--stay! were they bounding, or had they quieted down to a curious content? "I am not so sure," he replied gravely. "There is such a thing, you are doubtless aware, as love at first sight." "Not for sensible people, and I think we are sensible," she argued grudgingly. "I know, at any rate, that I was not in love with you for a long time afterwards." The whole world seemed to spin round with Ned.... "Then you are--oh! my dear, my dear!" ... "Please don't!" she cried, hastily drawing back from his outstretched hands; "I hate being touched. Besides that has nothing to do with what I want to find out. Why, from the very beginning, did you always understand? That can have nothing to do with love ... not, at least, with love like Gwen's"--the last sentence came thoughtfully in a lower key. "But our love will be different, dear," he said almost solemnly. "If you will marry me, Aura, I will try to understand to the very end--so help me God." She smiled at him brilliantly. "And you would--you couldn't help it! But that is no reason why we should marry. It seems to me we have mixed things up somehow. No! that is no reason at all." "Perhaps not," he admitted, following her thought. "Then marry me for some other reason, my dear." She shook her head. "There is only one reason for marriage," she said, with a wisdom born of the untrammelled teaching of Nature, "and if I were to marry you--I should be afraid--yes, Ned! I will tell you the truth because you are certain to understand--I should be afraid of loving you too much. I--I don't want to love like that."