"I suppose so. I don't know. I was so taken up with thinking about you, that I paid very little attention to anything else." "I'm afraid I didn't deserve it. I wasn't thinking of anybody but myself. It was very good of you." "Of course you weren't thinking of anybody," Stanford responded, pulling his mustache more furiously than ever; "but I was at the club instead of being in a burning car. I was half crazy at the thought that my future wife"-- "Stop!" Berenice broke in. "You mustn't say such things. I'm not your future wife!" "Forgive me. I know I haven't any right to say that when you haven't promised; but I can't help thinking of you so, and"-- "Oh, please don't!" she cried. A wave of humiliation, of repulsion, of terror, swept over her. That this man had thought of her as his wife seemed almost like an inexorable bond. She shrank away from him with an impulse too strong to be controlled. "But, Berenice, I"-- She sprang up and faced him. "I have never promised you!" she declared with hurried vehemence. "I never will promise you! I can't marry you. If I've made you think so, I didn't mean to. I didn't know my own mind. I thought--O Mr. Stanford, if I have deceived you, I beg your pardon. I"-- The tears choked and blinded her. She broke off, and put her handkerchief to her eyes; but when she heard him rise and hurry toward her, she went on hastily. "I've let you go on thinking I'd marry you; I know I have. I thought so myself; but I've found out that it's all a mistake. I didn't realize what I was doing. I'm so sorry. I do hope you'll forgive me." He regarded her in amazement not unmingled with indignation. "You have let me think so," he said. "Now I suppose there's somebody else." "Oh, I shall never marry anybody," she answered quickly. "When a girl tells one man she never'll marry," retorted he bitterly, "there's sure to be another man in her mind." She felt herself burn with blushes to her brow; and then in very shame and anger to grow pale again. Her first impulse was to leave him; but she controlled herself. He was her guest, he had come all the way from Boston to assure himself that she was safe, and more than all she was sorely aware that she had not treated him well. To have injured a man is to a woman apt to be an excuse for continuing to treat him ill; but when the opposite occurs she can be very forbearing. "There is no other man," she said with dignity. Then she added, more mildly: "Badly as I may have treated you, I don't think you've quite the right to say such a thing as that to me." "I haven't," he acknowledged contritely. "I beg your pardon; but I surely have a right to ask what I've done to change you so. You were not like this yesterday." Berenice forced herself to meet his eyes, but she ignored his question. She sank back into the chair from which she had risen to face him.