"Was it head, or heart, with you?" she said.
"It's both," he said.
She gave him a puzzled look: "Why, you don't mean that you care for that horrid Kate, still?"
He smiled, and looked off over the water.
"You are very stupid, Fred."
She was plainly perplexed. "I don't understand?"
"That's why I say you are stupid."
His face was turned away from her; he was breaking a dead twig into inch-long pieces, and carefully arranging them in a precise fagot on his knee; she saw, with a little shock of surprise, that his fingers were trembling.
"Why, Arthur!" she began,—and stopped short, the color rising slowly to her forehead. He gave her a quick look.