This Gladys Todd, sitting amid the faded grandeur of the hotel parlor, this handsome mannish woman in a tweed suit, with a snappy dog in her arm, was not the same girl beside whom I had sat ages ago, watching her paint tulips and sprays of wisteria, not the same whose voice had joined with mine in the sentimental strains of "Annie Laurie." But I felt that I had a duty, and I sat down on the sofa and held out my hand and in a voice of pleading asked her again if she was not glad to see me. "No, David," she said, turning her eyes downward to Blossom. I was quite unprepared for such a frank admission, and it came like a blow. In all my thought of Gladys Todd I had quite accustomed myself to the confession that I did not look with pleasure to her home-coming, but that she might regard me in the same light never occurred to me. This knowledge was humiliating. I had been holding myself to the strict line of duty and honor, but I had never suspected that she might be impelled by exactly the same motives. Now I was hurt. As I sat staring at her I cast about for the reason of the change. In my case it was another woman, but a superlatively wonderful woman. In hers it might be another man, a superlatively wonderful man. The idea was not pleasant. In my case there was at least the excuse of old acquaintance. In hers the change must have come in a single week at sea, where miles of walking on the deck and hours leaning on the rail with elbows close together might have revealed some kindred spirit. There flashed to me her action in turning from me, the watcher on the pier, to ex-Judge Bundy, and in him losing all thought of me. But ex-Judge Bundy was not a superlatively wonderful man. He was only a rich widower with two married daughters, and was old enough to be her father. My estimate of my own worth was not so modest that I could conceive of my interests ever being seriously jeopardized by this pompous maker of nails. It was pleasanter to think that the fault lay rather in my own unworthiness than in another's worth, and my pride urged me to combat her, to prove that while I might not be all that a woman of her ideals could ask, yet my shortcomings were those of my fellows in mass and not of the individual. "I do not understand, Gladys," I said, and I held out my hand to take hers and to reassert my old ascendancy, but I was foiled by Blossom, who darted at me with such fierceness as to compel me to draw back. "David, I'm so sorry," she said. She looked me in the eyes and spoke with the even voice of one who had entire command of herself. "The plain truth is that I have made a great mistake. I really thought I cared for you." "And now you think you don't," I said, brushing aside such an absurdity with a wave of my hand. "Nonsense! After four years, you can not tell me that you have suddenly discovered that you never cared for me. I can not give you up for some absurd whim."