“Oliver Crowe, I never heard such a nasty, childish seventeen-year-old idea from you in my whole life!” Oh what would calm Mrs. Piper say if she could see Elinor, eyes cloudy with anger, leaning across the tea-wagon and emphasizing her points by waves of a jammy knife as she defends constancy and romance! “They do _not_! When a girl cares for a man--and she knows he cares for her--she doesn't care about _anything_ else, she--” “That's what Nancy said,” remarked Oliver placidly out of his muffin. “And then--” “Well, you know I'm sorry for you--you know I'm just as sorry for you as I can be,” went on Elinor excitedly. “But all the same, my dear Ollie, you have no right in the least to say that just because one girl has broken her engagement with you, all girls are the same. I know dozens of girls--” “So do I,” from Oliver, quietly. “Dozens. And they're just the same.” “They _aren't_. And I haven't the slightest wish to suggest that it was _your_ fault, Oliver--but no girl as sweet and friendly and darling as Nancy Ellicott, the little I knew of her that is, but other girls can tell, and she certainly thought you were the person that made all the stars come out in the sky and twinkle, would go and break her engagement _entirely_ of her own accord--you _must_ have--” And now Oliver looked at her with a good deal of sorrowful pity--she had delivered herself so completely into his hands. “I never said it was her fault, Elinor,” he said gently, keeping the laughter back by a superb effort of will. “It was mine, I am sure,” and then he added most sorrowfully, “All mine.” “_Well!_” For a moment he forgot that he was there playing checkers with himself and Elinor for Ted. “You've never been through it, have you?” he said rather fiercely. “You can't have--you couldn't talk like that if you had. When you've put everything you've got in mind or body or soul completely in one person's hands and then, just because of a silly misunderstanding we neither of us meant--they drop it--and you drop with it and the next thing you know you're nothing but a _mess_ and all you can wonder is if even the littlest part of you will ever feel whole again--” He realized that he was very nearly shouting, and then, suddenly, that if he kept on this way the game was over and lost. He must think about Ted, not Nancy. Ted, Ted. Mr. Theodore Billett, Jr. “She'd forgiven me such a lot,” he ended rather lamely. “I thought she'd keep on.” But his outburst had only made Elinor feel the sorrier for him--he felt like a burglar as he saw the kindness in her eyes. “I don't imagine she ever had such an awful lot to forgive, Ollie,” she said gently. Then the lie he had been leading up to all the way came at last, magnificently hesitant. “She had, Elinor. I was in France you know.” He was afraid when he had said it--it sounded so much like a title out of a movie--but he looked steadily at her and saw all the color go out of her face and then return to it burningly.