Once before, that day, three words from him had made a series of situations crumble away and become as though they’d never been. Once again a whole set of relations—that between a typist and the head of the firm; that between a paid official _fiancée_ and her employer; that between a man and a girl who played that drawn game of platonic friendship; that other between two who quarrelled and fenced and misunderstood and hurt each other and themselves so cruelly—was brushed aside by another three words. Billy Waters, still standing there and looking down gravely at me, said very simply, “I love you.” What could I say? I was too dazed. I gasped, as when at Porth Cariad I waded out for a swim, and a racing wave met me and dashed above my breast, catching my breath. Sentences formed themselves and died away before I opened my lips. “You can’t mean——” “Then why——” “A mistake——” “This is the first gleam I’ve had that you——” “If it’s because you’re _sorry_——” Then, of them all, I could catch firmly at only one thought. I said breathlessly, holding the arm of the chair, “_But that girl_——” “Won’t you understand? I never gave her a thought of that sort, or she me,” he declared rapidly, “except about how we were to get out of it. If you only knew, that unfortunate French child and I had as much ado to keep from getting married as some couples have to pull it off! I tell you she and that young Lenoir—man who’s just beaten the record for upside-down flying—were—but it’s not _their_ affair I’m bothering about just now—it’s——” “But she was so pretty!—so much smarter—she——” “She was quicker than you! _She_ spotted, that day at tea in the cottage, how her plan for me of an official _fiancée_ was working out.” “_Her_ plan?” Even in that moment I remembered that the idea had never seemed quite like him! “Yes—_I_ was at my wit’s end. _She_ told me the only plan was to say I was already booked! Yes! But who to? ‘Anyone,’ she said. ‘You engage someone—like a courier, an interpreter—someone you pay to understand it is a farce’—(You know the way she talks!) ‘You go to an office—your own, perhaps. You choose one of your stenographistes—you have of them, yes?’ I told her I’d got four. I think I said three of the lot would be more or less impossible as a _fiancée_, but the fourth—But never mind that.” “Yes, but I do! What did you say about the fourth?” “I’ll tell you,” he said, laughing a little, “some time. We have plenty of time, I hope.” “No, now,” I said. It _was_ my turn to insist. “What about the fourth?” “Oh, I forget! Well, then,” hurriedly. “I believe I said she seemed quite a nice, quiet, unassuming little mouse of a person—look here, you’ll _have_ to forgive me if I do tell you!—not particularly brilliant at her job, but dependable; and that perhaps she _was_ the kind of girl one could take about when it seemed necessary, and leave a good deal to one’s people—mind, I’d scarcely _seen_ you! I hadn’t seen you! I said I thought you seemed——” “Well?”