"Will you let me fix it? I must go West and sell out and pull up, you know, preparatory to never going again. We can fix the day now or we can fix it when I come back." "Oh, when you come back," she entreated so eagerly that Peter said: "Charlotte, let me ask you one thing. Were you ever sorry you wrote me that taking-back letter?" "Why, Peter, you know how I am. When I have decided something I have undecided it. That's all." From gay he turned to grave. "I ought to have thought. I haven't been fair; _I_ haven't played the game. I ought to have given you another chance; and I haven't, have I?" "Why, I suppose a girl can always change," Charlotte said, suggestively. "Yes, but you won't always be a girl. I've never asked you if you wanted to change. I ask you now. Do you?" "How can I tell? Hadn't we better let it go as it is? Only not hurry about--about--marrying?" "Certainly not hurry about marrying. I've wondered that a girl could make up her mind to marry any given man. Haven't you ever wished that you had not made up your mind about me?" "Hundreds of times. But I don't know that I meant anything by it." He took her hand from where it lay in her lap as again she sat on one of the white-and-gold thrones beside him and gently pressed it. "Well, then, let's play we have never been engaged. I'm going West to-night to settle things up for good, and I won't be back for three or four months, and when I come back we'll start new. I'll ask you, and you shall say yes or no just as if you had never said either before." "Peter, when you talk like that!" She saw his brown, round face dimly through her wet eyes, and she wanted to hug him for pity of him and pride in him, but she could not decide to do it. They went out to lunch at the Woman's Exchange, and the only regret Peter had was that it was so long past the season of strawberry shortcake, and that Charlotte seemed neither to talk nor to listen; she ought to have done one or the other. They had left the Vaneckens busy with their summer trunks at the far end of the northward corridor, where their wireless station had been re-established for Charlotte's advantage, though she had not thought of it the whole short morning long. When she came back from lunch the Vaneckens were just brushing away the crumbs of theirs, which the son and brother seemed to have brought in for them in a paper box; at any rate, he was now there, making believe to help them.