"Somehow I don't believe he ever did," said Wade, thoughtfully. "I could imagine him being sort of shy if he were in love. Perhaps, while he was working his courage up to the sticking point, your father stepped in and carried off the prize. That happens sometimes, you know." "I suppose it does," laughed Eve. "Or perhaps he was so busy quoting bits of poetry to her that he never had time!" "That's so." Wade smiled. "There's one thing certain, and that is, if she did refuse him, he had a quotation quite ready for the occasion." "''Tis better to have loved and lost' and so on?" "Something of the sort," answered Wade. "I wonder, though, if that is true, Miss Walton?" "What?" asked Eve. "That it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." "I'm sure I don't know. Probably not. Perhaps, like a great many of the Doctor's quotations, it's more poetical than truthful." "I think it must be," mused Wade. "It doesn't sound logical to me. To say that, when you've seen a thing you want and can't have it, you're better off than before you wanted it, doesn't sound like sense." "Have you ever wanted much you didn't get?" asked Eve. Wade thought a minute. "Come to think of it, Miss Walton, I don't believe I have. I can't think of anything just now. Perhaps that's why I'd hate all the more to be deprived of what I want now," he said, seriously. She shot a glance at him from under the edge of the sunshade. "You talk as though some one was trying to cheat you out of something you'd set your heart on," she said lightly. "That isn't far wrong," he answered. "I have set my heart on something and it doesn't look now as though I'd ever get it." "Oh, I hope you will," said Eve, sincerely. "Your saying that makes it look farther off than ever," responded Wade, with a wry smile. "My saying that? But why?" she asked in surprise. "Because," he answered, after a moment's silence, "if you knew what it is I want, I don't think you'd want me to have it, and that you don't know proves that I'm a long way off from it." "It sounds like a riddle," said Eve, perplexedly. "Please, Mr. Herrick, what is the answer?" Wade clenched his hands in his pockets and looked very straight ahead up the road. "You," he said. "_Me?_" The sunshade was raised for an instant. "_Oh!_" The sunshade dropped. They walked on in silence for a few paces. Then said Wade, with a stolen glance at the white silken barrier: