To this he made no reply, and for some time they drove on in silence. Then Jack shook off his brief depression, and apparently set himself to be as amusing as he could. He aroused May to a condition of mirth almost wildly joyous. They laughed and jested, told each other stories, and the girl's eyes shone, her dimples danced in and out like sun-flecks flashing on the water, the color in her cheeks was warm and delightful. Not a word more was said on personal matters until Jack deposited her at her own door once more. "I never had such a perfectly lovely ride in my life!" she exclaimed, looking at him with eyes full of animation and gratitude. "Then you see what you are losing in throwing me over," he returned. "Oh, you've had your chance and lost it!" She laughed brightly, and held out her hand. "But you see," she said mischievously, "the trouble is that the best thing about the ride was just that loss!" "I like your impudence!" he chuckled. "Well, you're welcome. Good-by. I'll send Fairfield round to talk with you about the letter." And before she could reply he was away. XXII THE COOING OF TURTLE-DOVES There is nothing like the possibility of loss to bring a man to his bearings in regard to a woman. Dick Fairfield had told Jack that of course he was not a marrying man, that he could not afford to marry a poor woman, and that nothing would induce him to marry a rich one; he had even set down in his diary on the announcement of Jack's engagement that he could never have offered his hand to a girl with so much money; what his secret thought may have been no sage may say, but he had all the outward signs of a man who has convinced himself that he has no idea of trying to secure the girl he loves. Now that the affair had shaped itself so that May was again free, he hurried to her with a precipitation which had in it a choice flavor of comedy. May always told him afterward that he did not even do her the honor to ask her for her hand, but that he coolly walked in and took up the engagement of Jack Neligage where it had been dropped. It was at least true that by nine o'clock that very evening they were sitting side by side as cosy and as idiotically blissful as a young couple newly betrothed should be. However informally the preliminaries had been conducted, the conclusion seemed to be eminently satisfactory. "To think that this is the result of that little letter that I found on my table one rainy night last February," Dick observed rapturously. "I remember just how it looked." "It was horrid of me to write it," May returned, with a demure look which almost as plainly as words added: "Contradict me!" "It was heavenly of you," Dick declared, rising to the occasion most nobly. "It was the nicest valentine that ever was." Some moments of endearments interesting to the participants but not edifying in narration followed upon this assertion, and then the little stream of lover-talk purled on again.