"And what was it about?" asked Tom, very earnestly.
"It was about a woman. A woman I like very well, and who happens to be going on the same steamer I am to the Tropics. There! The terrible secret is out."
Tom studied the answer a long time, but evidently could make nothing of it.
"Statia has always liked you immensely, Don," he said. "I've been almost jealous of you sometimes. She wouldn't go against you all of a sudden without what seemed to her a strong reason."
"And I like Statia," was my reply. "Yes, in spite of the ugly attitude she has chosen to take toward me. Why, Tom—I don't know but, under the circumstances, I ought to tell you—I asked her only a week ago to marry me."
"Ah!" he exclaimed, in a mixture of happiness and pain, that was very touching.
"Yes, and she refused positively. I was disappointed, you may believe, for I had thought she entertained a decided feeling in my favor, and would have asked long before except for that illness of mine. Her attitude might have thrown me back into the doctor's hands, for my head is not yet any too strong, but I managed to crush down my thoughts and bear up under it. I hope it's not wrong to tell you this, old chap, but I don't think I ought to let you go off with wrong impressions of me."
He shook his head in mute dismay.
"The other woman—the one you and she were speaking about," he said. "Who is she? It seems as if the key to the whole trouble was there."
"Now, Tom," I replied, "you have no right to ask me a question like that and I shall have to decline to bring the name of a third person into this discussion. I have the greatest regard for you and the highest respect for Statia. If you decide to throw me over, the responsibility must rest where it belongs."