"Then tell me that you forgive me!" "If I once begin, I shall be tempted to tell something else," he said, looking me through and through with those great dusky eyes. "And I will tell it," he went on, his grasp on my hands growing firmer-"It is easy to forgive when one loves." I pulled my hands away, and burst out crying again. "Oh, Dr. Elliott this is dreadful!" I said. "You do not, you cannot love me! You are so much older than I am! So grave and silent! You are not in earnest?" "I am only too much so," he said, and went quietly out. I went back to the nursery. The children rushed upon me, and insisted that I should "play die." I let them pull me about as they pleased. I only wished I could play it in earnest. Chapter 8 VIII JUNE 28. MOTHER writes me that Dr. Cabot is out of danger, Dr. Elliott having thrown new light on his case, and performed some sort of an operation that relieved him at once. I am going home. Nothing would tempt me to encounter those black eyes again. Besides, the weather is growing warm, and Aunty is getting ready to go out of town with the children. JUNE 29.-Aunty insisted on knowing why I was hurrying home so suddenly, and at last got it out of me inch by inch. On the whole it was a relief to have some one to speak to. "Well!" she said, and leaned back in her chair in a fit of musing. "Is that all you are going to say, Aunty?" I ventured to ask at last. "No, I have one more remark to add," she said, "and it is this: I don't know which of you has behaved most ridiculously. It would relieve me to give you each a good shaking." "I think Dr. Elliot has behaved ridiculously," I said, "and he has made me most unhappy." "Unhappy!" she repeated. "I don't wonder you are unhappy. You have pained and wounded one of the noblest men that walks the earth." "It is not my fault. I never tried to make him like me." "Yes, you did. You were perfectly bewitching whenever he came here. No mortal man could help being fascinated." I knew this was not true, and bitterly resented Aunty's injustice. "If I wanted to 'fascinate' or 'bewitch' a man," I cried, "I should not choose one old enough to be my father, nor one who was as uninteresting, awkward and stiff as Dr. Elliott. Besides, how should I know he was not married? If I thought anything about it at all, I certainly thought of him as a middle-aged man, settled down with a wife, long ago. "In the first place he is not old, or even middle aged. He is not more than twenty-seven or eight. As to his being uninteresting, perhaps he is to you, who don't know him. And if he were a married man, what business had he to come here to see as he has done?" "I did not know he came to see me; he never spoke to me. And I always said I would never marry a doctor."