Near where he sat so many violets were blooming that they made a purple carpet for the ground. Going over to them, she knelt and began to pluck them. “If any danger threatened me,” she began, in her clear, low voice, “I believe that you would step between me and it, though at the peril of your life. I believe that you take some pleasure in what you are pleased to style my beauty, some pride in a mind that you have largely formed. If I died early, it would grieve you for a little while. I call you my friend.” “I would be called your lover,” he said. She laid her fan upon the ground, heaped it with violets, and turned again to her reaping. “How might that be,” she asked, “when you do not love me? I knew that you would marry me. What do the French call it,--_mariage de convenance_?” Her voice was even, and her head was bent so that he could not see her face. In the pause that followed her words treetop whispered to treetop, but the sunshine lay very still and bright upon the road and upon the flowers by the wayside. “There are worse marriages,” Haward said at last. Rising from the log, he moved to the side of the kneeling figure. “Let the violets rest, Evelyn, while we reason together. You are too clear-eyed. Since they offend you, I will drop the idle compliments, the pretty phrases, in which neither of us believes. What if this tinted dream of love does not exist for us? What if we are only friends--dear and old friends”-- He stooped, and, taking her by the busy hands, made her stand up beside him. “Cannot we marry and still be friends?” he demanded, with something like laughter in his eyes. “My dear, I would strive to make you happy; and happiness is as often found in that temperate land where we would dwell as in Love’s flaming climate.” He smiled and tried to find her eyes, downcast and hidden in the shadow of her hat. “This is no flowery wooing such as women love,” he said; “but then you are like no other woman. Always the truth was best with you.” Upon her wrenching her hands from his, and suddenly and proudly raising her head, he was amazed to find her white to the lips. “The truth!” she said slowly. “Always the truth was best! Well, then, take the truth, and afterwards and forever and ever leave me alone! You have been frank; why should not I, who, you say, am like no other woman, be so, too? I will not marry you, because--because”--The crimson flowed over her face and neck; then ebbed, leaving her whiter than before. She put her hands, that still held the wild flowers, to her breast, and her eyes, dark with pain, met his. “Had you loved me,” she said proudly and quietly, “I had been happy.” [Illustration: “HAD YOU LOVED ME--I HAD BEEN HAPPY”]