“At Heddon. Do you think I shall ever forget your words?” She laughed divinely at the puzzledom on his face. “No. You were too loyal to tell me--but you told Connie Deering. Hush! Don't start. Connie did not betray you. She is the staunchest soul breathing. You and she were on the slope by the croquet lawn--do you remember? There was a hedge of clipped yew above--” “And you overheard?” She laughed again, happily, at his look of distress. “I should be rather pleased--now--if I were you,” she said in the softer and deeper tones of her voice. A few moments later he said, “You must give me back the portrait. I shall burn it.” “Why?” “You are a million times more beautiful, more adorable.” He asked her when she had begun to think of him--the eternal, childlike question. She met his lover's gaze steadily. Frankness was her great virtue. “It seems now that I have cared for you since the first day. You soon came into my life, but I did n't know how much you represented. Then I heard you speaking to Connie. That mattered a great deal. When that man shot you, I knew that I loved you. I thought you were dead. I rushed down the slope and propped you up against my knees--and I thought I should go mad with agony.” “I never heard of that,” said Jimmie in a low voice. He became suddenly thoughtful, rose to his feet and regarded her with a changed expression, like that of a man awakened from a dream. “What is going to be the end of this?” he asked. Norma, for once unperceptive and replying to a small preoccupation of her own, flushed to her hair. “I know Connie well enough to look her up and ask her for hospitality.” “I wasn't thinking of that,” said Jimmie. “We have been like children and had our hour of joy, without thinking of anything else. Now we must be grown-up people. After what has passed between us, I could only ask you to be my wife.” “I came here for you to ask me,” she said. “I have no right to do so, dear. I bear a dishonoured name. The wonder and wild desire of you made me forget.” She looked at him strangely, her lips working in the shadow of her old smile of mockery. “That proves to me that it is your name and not yourself that is dishonoured. If it had been yourself, you would not have forgotten.” Jimmie drew himself up, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his manner that Norma in her woman's way noted swiftly. In spite of his homeliness there was the undefinable spirit of the great gentleman in Jimmie. “I am dishonoured. The matter was public property. I discuss it with no one, least of all with you.” “Very well,” she said. “Let it never be mentioned again between us. I range myself with Aline. I shall believe what I like. You can't prevent my doing that, can you? I choose to believe you are the one thing God made in which I can find happiness. That's enough for me, and it ought to be enough for you.” Jimmie put his hand on her shoulder, deeply moved.