He stood beside the bookcase and looked at her, across the room, where she sat between the windows, the little smile, only, perhaps fainter now, still hovering about her lips. "I understand, dear," she said simply. The relief her words carried to him filled him with as keen and as complete a joy as he had ever felt. "I knew you would," he said; "I knew you would--you're so sensible about things." The smile flickered an instant brighter as she replied, with a little pout, "Oh, Jack, never call a girl '_sensible_': it's as bad as calling her '_nice_,' and that's like throwing a stone at her." He laughed, a little stridently. "Come here, dear; sit here and tell me all about it." She made room for him beside her and held the cushions against the wall till he sank among them. "Is it your father, dear; did you tell _him_?" she asked quietly. "No, it isn't," he blurted, frankly. "I wish to Heaven it were." "So it's you; just yourself; oh, Jack!" How grateful he was for that little note of gay mockery in her voice she never knew. "Can't you tell me all about it?" He did not answer at once. "Then shall _I_ tell _you_?" she said. He glanced at her appealingly, but she was still smiling. "Well--let's see,--where does it begin? Oh, yes. There was once a boy came to college, and he fell in with other boys and had the best sort of time till he met an ogre--no, I mean an ogress--and after that he didn't have a good time at all----" He was smiling now, with her. "----And in some foolish way he began to think he liked the ogress--whom he shouldn't have liked--and she, well, she liked him too, and they became pals--regular pals--and one day he told her he loved her. He thought he did. He didn't _really_; but he was to learn _that_ afterward. So they became engaged--this fine fellow and the ogress. Silly, wasn't it? Silly of the fine fellow and silly of the ogress. And for a little while--no,"--she mused--"not a _little_ while; quite a long while, they were happy; very, very happy. And all the time they were drifting closer and closer to the edge of a precipice over which they were sure to take a tumble one day. But before that day came the fine fellow woke up, for, you see, he'd only been dreaming all the time. And the ogress wasn't an ogress at all, but just a girl--a _sensible_ girl...." He glanced at her reprovingly. " ... just a sensible girl," she went on, "who, when he told her it was all a dream, said it had been a happy, happy dream, but that perhaps the awakening had come just in time. Perhaps it has, Jack," there was a note of seriousness in her voice now. "Perhaps it has; who knows? We shall think so anyway; shan't we? It will make it easier...." "Yes, it will make it easier," he muttered, all the light gone out of his eyes, the smile from his lips. "Jack; you _will_ tell me one thing, won't you, dear?" He looked up into her face wonderingly. "What is it?" he said.