“It’s so silly and tiresome!” she said. “He gets terribly on my nerves. He—he sighs—in the most heartbreaking way!” She laughed a little nervously. Then a moment of silence followed.
“Clytie,” he began,—“I am going to call you that to-day, for I haven’t got used to thinking of you as Cicely yet—do you know why I came?”
“To return the book,” she answered smilingly.
“No, not altogether. I came to ask you something.”
“I ought to feel flattered, oughtn’t I? It’s quite a ways here from Providence, isn’t it?”
“Supposing we don’t pretend,” he answered gravely. “We’ve gone too far to make that possible, don’t you think? And I’ve had a beast of a summer,” he added inconsequently. “I thought—do you know what I thought, dear?”
“How should I?” she asked weakly.
“I thought you were Laura Devereux, and that day when you didn’t come I went for you and saw you and Vincent on the porch. And afterwards he told me he was engaged to Miss Devereux, and—don’t you see what it meant to me? And yesterday I found out, quite by accident, and—” he reached across and seized her hand with a little laugh of sheer happiness—“I haven’t slept a wink since! I—I thought I’d never get here; the roads were quagmires!”
“Oh, why did you come?” she asked miserably.