Owen sat there a minute staring at her. "Ah, you're beautiful, more beautiful than any one," he broke out, "but I'll be hanged if I can ever understand you! On Tuesday, at your father's, you were beautiful—as beautiful, just before I left, as you are at this instant. But the next day, when I went back, I found it had apparently meant nothing; and now, again, that you let me come here and you shine at me like an angel, it doesn't bring you an inch nearer to saying what I want you to say." He remained a moment longer in the same position; then he jerked himself up. "What I want you to say is that you like me—what I want you to say is that you pity me." He sprang up and came to her. "What I want you to say is that you'll save me!" "Then he's as big a donkey as his mother! But you know you must account for their delay," Mrs. Gereth remarked.!

Fleda jerked herself up. "Were they saving the things?" "If you do any such thing, you shall never see me again,—absolutely, literally never!"

"Oh no, we haven't quarreled a bit!" Then with a smile: "We've only diverged." CHAPTER XVII "Oh, 'anything' is nothing at all! That's too easily said." Mrs. Gereth, reclining more completely, closed her eyes with an air of disgust, an air indeed of inviting slumber.