I know full well now what I should have said. I should have replied, “Yes--we are both almost free--but soon will be altogether free--I in six months, you as soon as you break your engagement.” That would have been bold and intelligent--for it is always intelligent to make the issue clear at the earliest possible moment. But I did not speak. I remained silent. Why? Because as I was talking with her I was realizing that I had been deceiving myself in a curious fashion. I had been so concentratedly in love with her-- Gentle reader, I see the mocking smile on your shallowly sentimental face. You are ridiculing a love that could have such restraint as mine--that could bear with Edna, could wait, could refrain from any of the familiar much-admired impetuosities and follies. You cannot understand. In this day when men no longer regard or feel their responsibilities in taking a more or less helpless woman to wife, your sense of the decencies is utterly corrupted. But let me say that no matter how ardently and romantically a man may conduct himself, a woman would do well to take care how she trusts him if he has a bad or even a doubtful record as to his way of meeting his responsibilities of whatever sort. That kind of love may “listen good,” but it does not “live good.” However--as I was about to say when your smile interrupted me, my all-absorbing love for Mary Kirkwood had misled me into assuming, with no reason whatsoever, that she understood all, that she knew I was eager to come to her, and would come as soon as I could. You will say this was absurd. Granted. But is not a man in love always absurd? You will say it was egotistical. Granted. But is not a man in love always egotistical? It is not the realities but the delusions that keep us going; and in those long months of waiting, of hoping often against hope, I had to have a delusion to keep me going. But now, her friendly, simply friendly, way of talking to me made me see that I had her yet to win, that I could not speak out directly as I had planned. You, who probably know women well, may say that this was a mistake. Perhaps. Nevertheless _I_ could not have done otherwise. You will say that women do not know their own minds, but have to be told. I admit it. You will say my silence was timidity. I admit it. I could not talk of love to a woman until I was sure she wished to hear. I had the timidity of the man to whom woman and love are serious matters; the timidity unknown to the man who makes love to every passable female at whom he has a chance; the timidity which all women profess to approve, but which, I more than suspect, appeals only to the jaded palate of the woman who has long made love and passion her profession.