She caught her breath quickly. “Do you think,” she asked, “that it was no sacrifice to my pride to beg you to walk home with me? After--after the things you said the other evening? Oh, Albert, how could you say them!” “Well--” he hesitated, and then added, “I told you I was sorry.” “Yes, but you weren't really sorry. You must have believed the things that hateful Issachar Price said or you wouldn't have repeated them. . . . Oh, but never mind that now, I didn't mean to speak of it at all. I asked you to walk home with me because I wanted to make up our quarrel. Yes, that was it. I didn't want to go away and feel that you and I were not as good friends as ever. So, you see, I put all MY pride to one side--and asked.” One phrase in one sentence of this speech caught and held the young man's attention. He forgot the others. “You are going away?” he repeated. “What do you mean? Where are you going?” “I am going to Cambridge to study. I am going to take some courses at Radcliffe. You know I told you I hoped to some day. Well, it has been arranged. I am to live with my cousin, father's half sister in Somerville. Father is well enough to leave now and I have engaged a capable woman, Mrs. Peters, to help Maria with the housework. I am going Friday morning, the day after to-morrow.” He stopped short to stare at her. “You are going away?” he asked, again. “You are going to do that and--and--Why didn't you tell me before?” It was a characteristic return to his attitude of outraged royalty. She had made all these plans, had arranged to do this thing, and he had not been informed. At another time Helen might have laughed at him; she generally did when he became what she called the “Grand Bashaw.” She did not laugh now, however, but answered quietly. “I didn't know I was going to do it until a little more than a week ago,” she said. “And I have not seen you since then.” “No, you've been too busy seeing someone else.” She lost patience for the instant. “Oh, don't, don't, don't!” she cried. “I know who you mean, of course. You mean Ed Raymond. Don't you know why he has been at the house so much of late? Why he and I have been so much together? Don't you really know?” “What? . . . No, I don't--except that you and he wanted to be together.” “And it didn't occur to you that there might be some other reason? You forgot, I suppose, that he and I were appointed on the Ticket Committee for this very dance?” He had forgotten it entirely. Now he remembered perfectly the meeting of the French Relief Society at which the appointment had been made. In fact Helen herself had told him of it at the time. For the moment he was staggered, but he rallied promptly. “Committee meetings may do as an excuse for some things,” he said, “but they don't explain the rest--his calls here every other evening and--and so on. Honest now, Helen, you know he hasn't been running after you in this way just because he is on that committee with you; now don't you?”