She bent over her sewing again: "I have been idle. The sun was agreeable. I went for a little stroll alone and found an old wall and a pool and a rose garden." "And then?" "The rose garden is very lovely. I sat there sewing and--thinking----" "About what?" "About--you--mostly." He said steadily enough: "Were your thoughts pleasant?" "Partly." "Only partly?" "Yes.... I remembered that you are joining your regiment." "But that should not be an unpleasant thought for you, Karen." "No. I would have it so, of course. It could not be otherwise under the circumstances." "It could not be otherwise," he said pleasantly; but his grey eyes never left the pale, sweet profile bent above the leisurely moving needle. "I understand." "I know you understand _that_--at least, Karen." "Yes. Other matters, too--a little better than I did--this morning." "What matters?" he asked casually. But his heart was threatening to meddle with his voice; and he set his lips sternly and touched his short mustache with careless fingers. Karen bent still lower over her sewing. The light was perfectly good, however. "What," he asked again, "are the matters which you now understand better than you did this morning?" "Matters--concerning--love." He laughed: "Do you think you understand love?" "A little better than I did." "In what way? You are not in love, are you, Karen?" "I think--a--little." "With whom?" No answer. "Not with _me_?" "Yes." She turned swiftly in the depths of her chair to confront him as he sprang to his feet. "Wait!" she managed to say; and remained silent, one slim hand against her breast. And, after a moment: "Would you not come any nearer, please." "Karen----" "Not now, please.... Sit there where you were.... I can tell you better--all I know--about it." She bent again over her needle, sewing half blindly, the hurrying pulses making her hand unsteady. After he was seated she turned her head partly around for a moment, looking at him with a fascinated and almost breathless curiosity. "If I tell you, you will come no nearer; will you?" she asked. "No. Tell me." She sewed for a while at random, not conscious what her fingers were doing, striving to think clearly in the menace of these new emotions, the power of which she was divining now, realizing more deeply every second. "I'll try to tell you," she said: "I didn't know anything--about myself--this morning. What we had been to each other I considered friendship. Remember it was my first friendship with a man. And--I thought it _was_ that." After a silence: "Was it anything deeper?" he asked. "Yes, deeper.... You frightened me at first.... I was hurt.... But not ashamed or angry. And I did not understand why.... Until you spoke and said--what you said." "That I love you?"