Perhaps it was the memory of this conversation that made her feel so ill at ease with Robert Van Brandt. She could not understand herself. Why should she feel so uncomfortable with her old friend? She could not help being aware that he cared for her, but why did the thought of his telling her so make her feel like a culprit? Why should he not tell her? Why should she not listen? One thing she felt she knew--if he did tell her, and she refused to listen, he would give it up. He would not persist. She remembered how, as a little girl, she had looked up to him reverentially as "big Robby Van Brandt." He was a hero to her in those days, until--he had let himself be balked of what he had started out to get. If he had only persisted, _in_sisted, who knows--maybe--. She was sure that if he offered her his love and she refused to accept it, he would not, like the nursery-rhyme model, try, try again. He would give up and go away--and in her loneliness she did not want him to go away. Was she selfish? she wondered. Selfish or no, she could not bring herself to follow Martha's advice and "let'm get his perposal offn his chest." It was early in April before he managed to do it. She and Radcliffe had gone to the Park. Radcliffe was frisking about in the warm sunshine, while Claire watched him from a nearby bench, when, suddenly, Mr. Van Brandt dropped into the seat beside her. He did not approach his subject gradually. He plunged in desperately, headlong, heartlong, seeming oblivious to everything and every one save her. When, at last, he left her, she, knowing it was for always, was sorely tempted to call him back. She did care for him, in a way, and the life his love opened up to her would be very different from this. And yet-- She closed her cold fingers about Radcliffe's little warm ones, and rose to lead him across the Plaza. She did not wonder at his being so conveniently close at hand, nor at his unwonted silence all the way home. She had not realized, until now that it was snapped, how much the link between this and her old home-life had meant to her. It meant so much that tears were very near the surface all that day, and even at night, when Martha was holding forth to her brood, they were not altogether to be suppressed. "Easter comes early this year," Mrs. Slawson observed. "'M I going to have a new hat?" inquired Cora. "What for do you need a new hat, I should like to know? I s'pose you think you'll walk up Fifth Avenoo in the church parade, an' folks'll stare at you, an' nudge each other an' whisper--'Looka there! That's Miss Cora Slawson that you read so much about in the papers. That one on the right-hand side, wearin' the French _shappo_, with the white ribbon, an' the grand vinaigrette onto it. Ain't she han'some?'" "I think you're real mean to make fun of me!" pouted Cora. "I got a dollar an' a half for the Easter singin'," announced Sammy. "Coz I'm permoted an' I'm goin' to sing a solo!"