"Ah!" he said, triumphantly; then frowned: "If your attachment to your husband makes you say I haven't any chance--but it can't be that." Her eyes suddenly dilated. "Why not? Why do you say it can't be that?" she said in a frightened voice. "I somehow got the impression--forgive me if I am saying anything I oughtn't to; but I had kind of an idea that you were not especially happy with him." She was silent. "But even if you were," he went on, "it is so many years; I don't mean to offend you, but a woman isn't faithful to a memory for so many years!" he looked at her incredulously; "not even you, I think." "Such a thing is possible," she told him coldly; she had grown very pale. "But it is not because of--of my husband that I say I shall never marry again." He interrupted her. "If it isn't a dead man nor a live man that's ahead of me, then it seems to me you can't say I haven't any chance--unless I am personally offensive to you?" There was an almost child-like consternation in his eyes; "am I? Of course I know I am a bear." "Oh, please don't say things like that!" she protested. "A bear? You? Why, you are just my good, kind friend and neighbor; but--" "Ah!" he said, "that scared me for a minute! Well, when I understood what was the matter with me (I didn't understand until about a week ago), I said to myself, 'If there's nobody ahead of me, that woman shall be my wife.' Of course, I am not talking sentimentalities to you; we are not David and Elizabeth! I'm fifty, and you are not far from it. But I--I--I'm hard hit, Mrs. Richie;" his voice trembled, and he twitched off his glasses with more than usual ferocity. Mrs. Richie rose; "Mr. Ferguson," she said, gently, "I do appreciate the honor you do me, but--" "Don't say a thing like that; it's foolish," he interrupted, frowning; "what 'honor' is it, to a woman like you, to have an ugly, bad-mannered fellow like me, want you for a wife? Why, how could I help it! How could any man help it? I don't know what Dr. King is thinking of, that he isn't sitting on your doorsteps waiting for a chance to ask you! I ought to have asked you long ago. I can't imagine why I didn't, except that I supposed we would go on always living next door to each other. And--and I thought anything like _this_, was over for me. . . . Mrs. Richie, please sit down, and let me finish what I have to say." "There is no use, Mr. Ferguson," she said; but she sat down, her face falling into lines of sadness that made her look curiously old.