"What encouraging?"
"I told him once that if I ever had to choose another place of residence than my own home I'd prefer this to any. Wasn't I a goose to tell him that? But I never dreamed then."
"Dreamed what?" Teddy was never very subtle.
"That he—that he would say what he did this evening. I never began to suspect till last Easter when we were both at the Starrs'."
"You never told me that he was there," said Teddy reproachfully. "You might have trusted me, Janet."
"I know I might, but I couldn't. I was half scared and half happy and I wasn't sure and I remembered 'the hero,' and so I made Lillie promise that she wouldn't say anything about it, because she was beginning to tease me and I told her it might be the means of breaking up my friendship with Mark—the perfect man, I mean. I was just in that state of mind when a little too much one way or the other would have made all the difference in the world, so I scared her into keeping quiet about it, and I wouldn't let him see me very often for the same reason. I've told you first of all, Ted, and that is why I can't cry to-night; I am too happy."
By common consent, they moved toward the dimness of the outer room, and sat together by the window, arms on sill and heads touching. The twinkling lights of Hopper Hall on the other side of the college campus began to disappear one by one. The tramping up-stairs had ceased.
From the gardens across the way came a night breeze rose-sweet. The honeysuckle climbing over the porch below the window, sent up a waft of perfume now and then from its few opened buds. A rapid footstep echoed along the pavement once in a while. Then came silence and the coolness of the night's late hours. The two girls sat without speaking for a long time, then Janet arose and laid a caressing hand on Teddy's head.
"It's all over for Cordelia, and Lee and the others, but for me it has just commenced. There will be much more of it in the years ahead of us, Teddy, for where I go you will have to come."
Presently their lights, too, were out, and only the shining stars looked down upon the sleeping town.