"I do say so," she answered, in a low voice, "and thank you, Mr. Burleson. You do not realize how astonished I am--how fortunate--how deeply happy--" "I can only realize it by comparison," he said. What, exactly, did he mean by that? She looked around at him; he was absorbed in scooping a hole in the pine-needles with his riding-crop. She made up her mind that his speech did not always express his thoughts; that it was very pleasant to listen to, but rather vague than precise. "It is quite necessary," he mused aloud, "that I meet your father--" She looked up quickly. "Oh! have you business with him?" "Not at all," said Burleson. This time the silence was strained; Miss Elliott remained very still and thoughtful. "I think," he said, "that this country is only matched in paradise. It is the most beautiful place on earth!" To this astonishing statement she prepared no answer. The forest was attractive, the sun perhaps brighter than usual--or was it only her imagination due to her own happiness in selling The Witch? "When may I call upon Mr. Elliott?" he asked, suddenly. "To-night?" No; really he was too abrupt, his conversation flickering from one subject to another without relevance, without logic. She had no time to reflect, to decide what he meant, before, crack! he was off on another trail--and his English no vehicle for the conveyance of his ideas. "There is something," he continued, "that I wish to ask you. May I?" She bit her lip, then laughed, her gray eyes searching his. "Ask it, Mr. Burleson, for if I lived a million years I'm perfectly certain I could never guess what you are going to say next." "It's only this," he said, with a worried look, "I don't know your first name." "Why should you?" she demanded, amused, yet instinctively resentful. "I don't know yours, either, Mr. Burleson--and I don't even ask you." "Oh, I'll tell you," he said; "my name is only John William. Now will you tell me yours?" She remained silent, coping with a candor that she had not met with since she went to parties in a muslin frock. She remembered one boy who had proposed elopement on ten minutes' acquaintance. Burleson, somehow or other, reminded her of that boy. "My name," she said, carelessly, "is Constance." "I like that name," said Burleson. It was pretty nearly the last straw. Never had she been conscious of being so spontaneously, so unreasonably approved of since that wretched boy had suggested flight at her first party. She could not separate the memory of the innocent youth from Burleson; he was intensely like that boy; and she had liked the boy, too--liked him so much that in those ten heavenly minutes' acquaintance she was half persuaded to consent--only there was nowhere to fly to, and before they could decide her nurse arrived. "If you had not told me your first name," said Burleson, "how could anybody make out a check to your order?"