"I don't mean the novel."
"I can't think of anything more but those pieces of petrified wood, and those you gave me," she said demurely. "I am sure that whatever else I have of yours you have given me without even my asking, and if you want it back you've only got to say so."
"I suppose that would be my very best course," I groaned.
"I hate people who force a present on one," she continued, "and then, just as one begins to like it, want it back."
Before I could speak, she asked hurriedly, "How often do you come to
Chicago?"
I took that to be a sort of command that I was to wait, and though longing to have it settled then and there, I braked myself up and answered her question. Now I see what a duffer I was—Madge told me afterward that she asked only because she was so frightened and confused that she felt she must stop my speaking for a moment.
I did my best till I heard the whistle the locomotive gives as it runs into yard limits, and then rose. "Good-by, Miss Cullen," I said, properly enough, though no death-bed farewell was ever more gloomily spoken; and she responded, "Good-by, Mr. Gordon," with equal propriety.
I held her hand, hating to let her go, and the first thing I knew, I blurted out, "I wish I had the brass of Lord Ralles!"
"I don't," she laughed, "because, if you had, I shouldn't be willing to let you—"
And what she was going to say, and why she didn't say it, is the concern of no one but Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gordon.