“If you like. How nice to see you again!” She spoke in such deliberate fashion that Dan wondered whether she was pretending. She seemed years older. It was not the rouge nor the sophisticated look in the blue eyes—nothing one could describe, unless one wished to be abstruse and say her soul had aged. Dan broke the pause by saying lightly, “Odd we should meet here, isn’t it? I was out of town when you came—Lorraine told me about it last night. She asked if she should call—I didn’t know whether or not you’d like to have her.” “It would be most kind,” Thurley said in the same even voice. “I have been deluged with calls—mostly out of curiosity. Or to see if I would deny having worn some one else’s clothes and having lived in a box-car ... the old car was used for kindling for a poor family, Ali Baba says.” “I didn’t know about it until it was too late to save it. It hurt when I thought of your old wagon being chopped up.” “Did it? Sentimental goose,” she managed to laugh at him. “Were you having a serious ‘think’?” he asked, after a brief silence. “About Philena—” She plucked some long blades of grass and began plaiting them into a ring. “How well you look! Lorraine takes good care of you, doesn’t she? Does she look as splendidly?” “Wish she did—you’ll see her, no doubt.” “If I stay here. I threatened to move this morning. Some old neighbors came in during my practice hour—they don’t understand!” “What made you come back,” he asked with a flash of the old boy spirit, “when you never even wrote me!” “Do you think it was yourself?” “No. I’m quite removed from you in every way. Why, that dress and ring cost more than Lorraine spends in a year! As Ali Baba says, ‘you are a great lady’—for you wouldn’t have come back unless you were,” he added honestly. “It makes us feel shabby and underdone by contrast.... Of course I never hope to be the same to you—you have everything the world can give you for pleasure and attention. I’m not deluding myself. I’m not such a jay as most of the boys—” “You never were,” she supplemented quickly. “I always tried to be ‘citified,’ to wake the town up and keep abreast of the times. Anyway, I loved the finest girl the village ever knew.” There was a quiver in his voice. It was like reopening a newly healed wound and letting it bleed a trifle. “And you married her,” Thurley insisted, the coquette coming to the surface. She tilted her head to look down at him through half closed, purplish eyes. “I _loved_ her—and I have a splendid wife,” Dan corrected. “What a lot happens in three years!” Thurley finished the grass ring and stuck it on her engagement finger. “Shall I make one for you?”