The girl smiled quietly. She had a rich oval face, with a deep look in her eyes, at once wistful and eager, and just a bit restless, as if there were problems there among the coals—questions she could not wholly solve.
"I did not think of it in that way," she said, "and you should not call me Constance, not now, and you are Mr. Weatherby. I do not know how we ever began—the other way. I was only a girl, of course, and did not know America so well, or realize—a good many things."
The young man stirred a little without looking up.
"I know," he assented; "I realize that six months seems a long period to a—to a young person, and makes a lot of difference, sometimes. I believe you have had a birthday lately."
"Yes, my eighteenth—my majority. That ought to make a difference."
"Mine didn't to me. I'm just about the same now as I was then, and——"
"As you always will be. That is just the trouble."
"I was going to say, as I always had been."
"Which would not be true. You were different, as a boy."
"And who gave you that impression, pray?"