"Well, what of it? Anything that you could say to a stranger, of course you could say to a man you knew." For reply May put up one hand to her eyes, and with the other began a distressing and complicated search for a handkerchief. Jack bent forward to peer into her face and instantly assumed a look of deep contrition. "Oh, I say," he remonstrated, "it's no fair to cry. Besides, you'll spoil your gloves, and now you've got to pay me a pair you can't afford to be so extravagant." The effect of this appeal was to draw from May a sort of hysterical gurgle, a sound indescribably funny, and which might pass for either a cry of joy or of woe. "I think you are too bad," she protested chokingly. "You know I didn't want Mr. Fairfield to have that letter when I was engaged to you!" "Oh, is that all?" he returned lightly. "Then that's easily fixed. Let's not be engaged any more, and then there'll be no harm in his having it." Apparently astonishment dried her tears. She looked at him in a sort of petrified wonder. "I really mean it, my dear," he went on with a paternal air which was exceedingly droll in Jack Neligage. "I'll say more. I never meant for a minute to marry you. I knew you didn't want to have me, and I'd no notion of being tied to a dragooned wife." "A dragooned wife?" May repeated. She was evidently so stupefied by the turn things had taken that she could not follow him. "A woman dragooned into marrying me," Jack explained, with a jovial grin; "one that was thinking all the time how much happier she would be with somebody else." "And you never meant to marry me? Then what did you get engaged to me for?" "I didn't. You wrote me that you were engaged to me, and of course as a gentleman I couldn't contradict a lady, especially on a point so delicate as that." May flushed as red as the fingers of dawn. "Your mother--" she began; but he interrupted her. "Isn't it best that we don't go into that?" he said in a graver voice. "I confess that I amused myself a little, and I thought that you needed a lesson. There were other things, but no matter. I never was the whelp you and Alice thought me." "Oh, Alice!" cried May, with an air of sudden enlightenment. "Well, what about her?" Jack demanded. "Nothing," replied May, smiling demurely to herself, "only she will be glad that the engagement is broken. She said awfully hard things about you." "I am obliged to her," he answered grimly. "Oh, not really awful," May corrected herself quickly, "and anyway it was only because she was so fond of you."