“A little boy like you coming to a little girl like me and pretending to speak seriously of marriage.--But let’s be honest with each other always. Do you promise?” “I promise.” “Then, I’ll tell you something. I think it’s splendid of you to go on loving me when you know that I’m not loving you in return.” “And I think it’s splendid of you to let me go on loving.” “But do I?” She eyed him mockingly. Then, with one of those sudden changes to wistfulness, “What Horace has done has made me frightened. I’m afraid--and I’m only telling you because we’ve promised to be honest--I’m so afraid that you’ll leave me, and that then I may begin to care. But you’d never be unkind like that, would you?” His hand stole out and met hers in denial. They kept on assuring each other that, whatever had befallen other people’s happiness, theirs was unassailable. They had dawdled through lunch. When at last they rose the room was nearly empty. “What next?” She clapped her hands. “I know. Make this day different from all the others. Let’s pretend.” “Pretend what?” “You’ll see.” On the Avenue they hailed a hansom and drove the long length of New York, through the Park to the Eighties on the West Side. Then she told him: they were to examine apartments, pretending they wanted to rent one. Wherever they saw a sign up they stopped the cabby and went in to make inquiries. Sometimes she talked Cockney. Sometimes she was a little French girl, who had to have everything that the janitor said translated to her by Teddy. She only once broke down--when the janitor, as ill-luck would have it, was a Frenchman; then they beat an ignominious retreat, laughing and covered with confusion. It was a very jolly game to play with a girl you loved--this pretending that you were seeking a nest. It was all the jollier because she would not own that that was the underlying excitement of their pretense. As they passed from room to room, and when no one was looking, he would slip his arm about her and kiss her unwilling cheek. “Wait till we’re in the hansom,” she would whisper. “Oh, Meester Deek, you do embarrass me.” Try as he would, he could not disguise the fact that he was in love with her. A light shone in his eyes. This seemed no game, but a natural preliminary to something that must happen. She was indignant when the custodians of the apartments took it for granted that they were an engaged couple. She ungloved her hand that they might see for themselves that the ring was lacking. “It’s for my mother,” she explained. “Yes, I like the apartment; but I can’t decide till my mother has seen it” She referred to Teddy pointedly as “My friend.” The janitors looked knowing. They smiled sentimentally and put her conduct down to extreme bashfulness.