The girl's mouth smiled, but her eyes blurred wet with fright and tears. "Would you care anything--about--marrying me--now?" she faltered. Drew's face blanched utterly, and the change gave him such a horridly foreign, alien look that the girl drew away from his hands and scuttled back to the big chair, and began all over again to smooth and smooth the garish white skirt across her knees. "Oh, Drew, Drew," she pleaded, "please look like--_you_. Please--please--don't look like anybody else." But Drew did not smile at her. He just stood there and stared in a puzzled, tortured sort of way. "What about Aleck Reese?" he began with fierce abruptness. The girl met the question with unwonted flippancy. "I've broken my engagement to Aleck Reese," she said coolly. "Broken it all to smash." But the latent tremor in her voice did not satisfy the man. "Why did you break it?" he insisted. "Isn't Aleck Reese the man you want?" Her eyes wavered and fell, and then rallied suddenly to Drew's utmost question. "Yes, Drew," she answered ingenuously, "Aleck Reese _is_ the man I want, _but he's not the kind of man I want_!" As the telltale sentence left her lips, every atom of strength wilted out of her, and she sank back into her chair all sick and faint and shuddery. The impulsive, bitter laugh died dumb on Drew's lips. Instantly he was at her side, gentle, patient, compassionate, the man whom she knew so well. "Do you mean," he stammered in a startled sort of way, "do you mean that--love or no love--I, I am the kind of man that you do want?" Her hand stole shyly into his and she nodded her head. But her eyes were turned away from him. For the fraction of a second he wondered just what the future would hold for him and her if he should snatch the situation into his arms and crush her sorrow out against his breast. Then in that second's hesitancy she shook her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him like a sick, wistful child. "Oh, Drew," she pleaded, "you've never, never failed me yet--all my hard lessons, all my Fourth-of-July accidents, all my broken sleds and lost skates. Couldn't you help me now we're grown up? I'm so unhappy." The grimness came back to Drew's face. "Has Aleck Reese been mean to you?" he asked. Her eyebrows lifted in denial. "Oh, no--not specially," she finished a trifle wearily. "I simply made up my mind at last that I didn't want to marry him." Drew's frown relaxed. "Then what's the trouble?" he suggested. Her eyebrows arched again. "What's the trouble?" she queried. "Why, I happen to love him. That's all." She took her hand away from Drew and began to smooth her skirt once more.