"I know you said so twice before.... I don't mean to be horrid or to reproach you, but--I am going to tell you--I was disappointed--even a--a little--unhappy. And it--lasted--some time.... So, if you are not coming, tell me so now.... It is hard to wait--too long." "Athalie," he said, completely surprised by the girl's frank avowal and by the unsuspected emotion in himself which was responding, "I am--I had no idea--I don't deserve your kindness to me--your loyalty--I'm a--I'm a--a pup! That's what I am--an undeserving, ungrateful, irresponsible, and asinine pup! That's what all boys in college are--but it's no excuse for not keeping my word--for making you unhappy--" "C. Bailey, Junior, you were just a boy. And I was a child.... I am still, in spite of my nineteen years--nearly twenty at that--not much different, not enough changed to know that I'm a woman. I feel exactly as I did toward you--not grown up,--or that you have grown up.... Only I know, somehow, I'd have a harder time of it now, if you tell me you'll come, and then--" "I _will_ come, Athalie! I _want_ to," he said impetuously. "You're more interesting,--a lot jollier,--than any girl I know. I always suspected it, too--the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might have had together--" She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at her, disturbed. "I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have had together, as though--" And suddenly she checked herself in her turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after all. Probably he understood what impulse had prompted her to terminate abruptly both laughter and discourse, for he reddened and gazed rather fixedly at the radiator which was now clanking and clinking in a very noisy manner. "You ought to have a fireplace and an open fire," he said. "It's the cosiest thing on earth--with a cat on the hearth and a big chair and a good book.... Athalie, do you remember that stove? And how I sat there in wet shooting clothes and stockinged feet?" "Yes," she said, drawing her own bare ones further under her chair. "Do you know what you looked like to me when you came in so silently, dressed in your red hood and cloak?" "What did I look like?" "A little fairy princess." "_I?_ In that ragged cloak?" "_I_ didn't see the rags. All I saw was your lithe little fairy figure and your yellow hair and your wonderful dark eyes in the ruddy light from the stove. I tell you, Athalie, I was enchanted." "How odd! I never dreamed you thought that of me when I stood there looking at you, utterly lost in admiration--" "Oh, come, Athalie!" he laughed; "you are getting back at me!" "It's true. I thought you the most wonderful boy I had ever seen." "Until I disillusioned you," he said. "You never did, C. Bailey, Junior." "What! Not when I proved a piker?"