Annie had begun seriously enough, but the softness of her real mood toward her cousin, together with the woman’s natural desire to have justice done her in affairs of the heart, had led her into a halfplayful revelation of pique. Seth would have answered here, but she held up her hand, and went on: “Wait till I am through. You didn’t know the truth in that matter of the log-jam. I understand that. There are a good many other things the truth of which you don’t know. You don’t, for instance, know the real facts about your own mind. You have had trouble to-night--for all your talk about making a clean breast of it you haven’t told me yet what it was--and your imagination makes a mountain out of what was probably a molehill, and you straightway rush off bareheaded to wander about like a ghost, and frighten people out of their wits; and then, happening to meet a girl who, by the deceptive light of the moon, looks as if she had some sense about her, you take without consideration the most important step a man can take in his whole life. Isn’t that a fair statement of the case? And, thinking it all over, don’t you agree with me that you would better tie my handkerchief about your head and go home and go to bed?” Seth laughed--a reluctant, in-spite-of-himself laugh. “You always would make fun of me when I tried to be serious. But if I ever _was_ serious in my life, it is now. Listen to me, Annie! It is not my fault if I see you now, truly as you are, for the first time. I have been a fool. I know it I said so at the start. But a man is the creature of circumstances, you know. Things have happened tonight which have opened my eyes. I realize now that you have been closest to my heart all the while, that I have loved you all----” Annie stopped him, with her hand upon his arm. “I don’t want you to finish that to-night. Please don’t, Seth. It would not be fair to me--or to yourself. Perhaps some other time when you have thought it over calmly--we will talk about it--that is, if you are of the same mind. If you are not, why, everything shall be just as it was before. And more than that, Seth, you--you mustn’t feel in the least bound by what has been said to-night. You know that I am older than you--two whole months! That isn’t as much as four years”--the meekest of her sex could scarcely have foregone that shaft--“but it gives me some sort of authority over you. And I am going to use it for your good. If it becomes necessary, I shall treat you like a perverse little boy, who doesn’t in the least know what is good for him.” There was no discouragement to Seth in the tones of her speech, however non-committal its text might be. He put his arm about her and murmured: “To think that I never _knew_ until now! Ah, you make me very happy, Annie. And shall you be happy, too, do you think, happier than if we hadn’t met?”