"No," he said as honestly as he could through the humming exaltation that sang in him until, to himself, he sounded like a beehive. There was a fallen log all over moss behind her. "We ought to be seated to properly consider this matter," he said. "I must not think of it! I must go instantly." When they were seated, and he had nearly twisted his head off trying to meet her downcast eyes, he resumed a normal and less parrot-like posture, and folded his arms portentously. "To begin," he said, "I came here fishing. I heard a stick crack----" She looked up. "_That_ was my fault. It was all my fault. I don't know how I ever came to do it. I never did such a thing in my life. We merely heard that you and Mr. Langdon were in the woods----" "_Who_ heard?" "We. Never mind the others. I'll say that _I_ heard you were here. And--and I took my--my net and came to--to----" "To what?" "To--investigate." "Investigate what? _Me_?" "Y-yes. I can't explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously. And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what--what certain people wanted, even if you were the author of _Amourette_----" [Illustration: "'To begin,' he said, 'I came here fishing.'"] "_I_ was not what _you_ wanted?" he repeated, bewildered. "I mean that--that you were not what--what _they_ required----" "They? Who are _they_? And what, in Heaven's name, did 'they' require?" "I don't want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knew immediately that they didn't want _you_, because you are not up to the University standard. And you won't understand that. I ought to have gone quietly away. . . . I don't know why I didn't. I was so interested in listening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem, _Amourette_. . . . And two hours slipped by----" "You stood there in the bushes looking at _me_ for two hours, _and_ listening to my poem--and _liking_ it?" "Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any apparent reason, I wanted you to see _me_ . . . without any apparent reason . . . and so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I came back . . . without any apparent reason. . . . I don't know what on earth has happened to make me--make me--forget----" "Forget what?" "Everything--except----" "Except what?" She looked up at him with clear grey eyes, a trifle daunted. "Forget everything except that I--like you, Mr. Sayre." He said: "That is the sweetest and most fearless thing a woman ever said. I am absurdly happy over it." She waited, looking down at her linked fingers. "And," he said, "for the first time in all my life I have cared more for what a woman has said to me than I care for anything on earth." There was a good deal of the poet in William Sayre. "Do you mean it?" she asked, tremulously. "I mean more." "I--I think you had better not say--more." "Why?" "Because of what I told you. There is no use in your--your finding me--interesting."