“I can’t treat it as absurd,” she had decided, “and I can’t be cross to him. He means it all, and he doesn’t dream how comical it is. I only hope he won’t be too excited to read what I’ve written.”
Evidently he was not, for just as Eleanor, having said good-night to the Harding girls who had walked up the hill with her from their classes, was turning in at her own door, Rafael glided out from the shadow of the house and stood in her path.
“Der is no hope?” he demanded tragically, standing bareheaded before her.
“Oh, Rafael,” Eleanor remonstrated, “I always speak the truth to you, don’t I? I wrote you a note because you wrote me one; and now you ask me if I mean it. Why, dear boy, I’m almost old enough to be your mother.”
“I love you,” Rafael told her stoutly.
“Then please me by acting sensible. You’re much too young to think about marrying and I——”
“You luf anodder,” broke in Rafael accusingly.
Eleanor flushed pink under cover of the darkness. Hardly to herself even did she admit the part that Richard Blake played in her thoughts. Indeed so skilfully had she concealed it that Dick Blake, working day and night to push “The Quiver” to the top of the magazine world, was wont to smile scornfully to himself when he thought how little he and his valiant efforts meant to the girl who, in all his hopes and plans and dreams, was to share his future.
But in a swift moment’s consideration Eleanor decided that the best way to cure this sentimental little Italian boy of his infatuation was to let him know that he had indeed a successful rival. Telling Rafael was different from admitting it to anyone else—because Rafael was foolishly in love too.
She stretched out her hand impulsively and patted his shoulder. “Yes, Rafael,” she whispered softly, “I’m in love with somebody else. But he doesn’t know it yet, and I’m not sure that he cares for me. Nobody knows it but you, and I’m telling you because I——”