"I hope you won't go to the house," she replied, her face coloring.
"I won't, but I didn't know but that I might see her going to a neighbor's house and then——"
"No," she broke in, "I hope you won't even do that. She must know how we feel, and if she had any interest in us she would come over here. No, I won't say that. I don't know what she may have to contend with. But her brother could come if he wanted to, but it makes no difference, I'm sure."
"Suppose I meet Millie in the road; shall I speak to her?"
"Surely, but don't ask her why she hasn't been to see us. What did Chyd say?"
"Not much of anything—said that so long as people were romantic they must expect trouble."
She frowned and thus replied: "A good authority on the evils of romance."
"Why not an expert on the thrills of romance?" I asked. "Hasn't he played up and down the brook?"
"So have the ducks," she answered, with a return of her smile. "But let us not talk about him—I would rather not think about him."
I could not play the part of a hero; I was not of the stock that had stood at the stake glorifying the deed with a hymn. I had wanted to drop the subject, not because it was painful to her, but because it pressed a spike into my own flesh; but her wish to dismiss him from her mind urged me to keep him there, to torture her with him. Brute? Surely; I have never denied it, but I loved her, and in love there is no generosity. The lover who seeks to be liberal is a hypocrite, a sneak-thief robbing his own heart.