"No!" she said, in a smothered voice; "no." Then, suddenly, she turned toward him and sank against his shoulder. He felt the sob that shook her from head to foot. Instinctively, his arms went about her, and he held her close to him; he was silent, but he trembled and those passionate and sensitive eyebrows twitched with pain. It was only for a moment that he felt her sobbing weight--then she flung her head up, her face quivering and smeared with tears. "What a liar I am! I'm not crying about Flora at all. I'm just--unhappy. That's all." He took her hand and held it to his lips, silently. "I'm tired," she said; "--no! no! I _won't_ lie--I _won't_ lie! I'm not tired. I've been a fool! That's all. A fool." "We all have to be fools, Fred, before we can be wise." She had drawn away from him, with a broken laugh. "You don't know anything about it! _You_ don't know what it's like to be a fool!" "Don't I? I was a very big fool myself, once. But I'm so wise now that I'm glad of all the blows my folly gave me then. I'll tell you about it, one of these days." He told her as they drove back to town. "And," he ended, "I can see that the best thing that ever happened to me was to have Kate jilt me." CHAPTER XXII After Fred had gone out into the wilderness, and learned her lesson; after that long day in the cottage, when her mind had emptied itself of some of its own certainties, so that deep, primitive knowledges could flow into it, she took up life again in her own way. She went to her office, she exercised Zip, she accepted every invitation that came to her; but she got thin. "Scrawny," her grandmother called it. Also, she expended a good deal of money on a bridesmaid's dress--for something had happened! Happened, curiously enough, on the very afternoon when she was studying that hard page of Nature's book, all alone, in the empty cottage by the lake.... The very next morning Laura had burst into 15 Payton Street. "Swear not to tell," she said; and when Fred had sworn, the secret--glowing, wonderful! was told in two words: "_I'm_ engaged!" Then came an ecstatic recital, ending with "I've decided on daffodil yellow for your dresses. Rather far ahead--for it isn't to be until the middle of December. But I think it's just as well to plan, don't you?" "Of course it is," Fred agreed. ("_Oh, if I only hadn't asked him!_") "Billy-boy will juggle out enough money for the finest satin going, for his only daughter; but you girls can have perfectly sweet flowered voile, over yellow charmeuse. I've a corking idea for your hats." Then she looked at Fred closely. "You're not a bit surprised; I believe you knew what was going to happen!"