"No, no!" she cried, with a quick movement of her hand as if to stay my words. "Don't say that. You may remain my friend if you like--but you may never be my lover--never!" "Never your lover!" I gasped, starting back as though she had dealt me a blow. I felt at that moment as though all I appreciated in life was slipping from me. I had staked all, everything, and lost. "Ah, do not give me this hasty answer," I urged. "I have been too eager; I am a fool. Yet I love you with a stronger, fiercer passion than any man can ever love you with, Eva. You are my very life," and notwithstanding her effort to snatch her hand away, I again raised it reverently to my lips. "No, no. This is a mere summer dream, Mr. Urwin," she said, with a cool firmness well assumed, although she avoided my gaze. "I have flirted with you, it is true, and we have spent many pleasant hours together, but I have never taken you seriously. You were always so merry and careless, you know." "You did not believe, then, that I really loved you?" I observed, divining her thoughts. "Exactly," she answered, still very grave. "If I had thought so, I should never have allowed our acquaintance to ripen as it has done." "Are you annoyed that I should have declared only what is but the absolute truth?" I asked. "Not at all," she responded quickly, with something of her old self in her low, sweet voice. "How can I be annoyed?" "And you will forgive my hasty declaration?" I urged. "There is nothing to forgive," she replied, smiling. "I only regret that you have misconstrued my friendship into love." I was silent. These last words of hers crushed all hope from my soul. She sat with her hand trailing listlessly in the water, apparently intent upon the long rushes waving in the green depths below. "Then," I said in a disappointed voice, half-choked with emotion, "then you cannot love me, Eva, after all?" "I did not say so," she answered slowly, almost mechanically. "What?" I cried joyously, again bending forward towards her. "Will you then try and love me--will you defer your answer until we know one another better? Say that you will." Again she shook her head with sorrowful air. She looked at me with a kind of mingled grief and joy, bliss embittered by despair. "Why should I deceive you?" she asked. "Why, indeed, should you deceive yourself?" "I do not deceive myself," I protested, "I only know that I adore you; that you are the sole light of my life, and that I love you devotedly." "Ah! And in a month, perhaps, you will tell a similar story to some other woman," she observed doubtingly. "Men are too often fickle." "I swear that I'll never do that," I declared. "My affairs of the heart have been few." "But Mary?" she suggested, and I knew from her tone that she had been thinking deeply of her. "Ours was a mere boy and girl liking," I hastened to assure her. "Ask her, and she will tell you the same. We never really loved."