rather certain there never would be any. She seemed to be grateful for
this and doubly kind, with only now and then the flash of a knowing
look, or the trifle of a deep, swiftly questioning glance, born, I dare
say, of that curiosity which the devil contrives to kindle in God's most
angelic women.

Doubtless she had a little speech of refusal patted into kindliness for
me. Perhaps she would not have been wholly anguished to have me hear
this--to be able to assure me tenderly, graciously, of the depth and
pureness of her friendship for me. Who knows? I am older now, and things
once hidden are revealed. Sometimes I think that a certain new respect
for me grew within her as the days tried the metal of my silence--a
respect, but nothing more. Her appreciation of my face was too palpably
without those reservations that so often cry louder than words.

So we sealed our secret, she and I, in an unspoken pledge, and not even
Solon Denney, so keen of scent for rivals, ever divined it.

He called me out with the old boyish whistle the day he confided to me
the tremendous news of his engagement. He laughed, foolish with joy as
he told it, and I felt tingling in my arms that old boyish, brute
impulse to slay him for the wretched ease of his victory. But we were
men, so I thrust one of those rebellious arms in among the strands of
the creeper, where her own arm had once been, and laid the other on his
shoulder in all friendliness. This, while he rambled on of the bigness
of life, the great future before Arcady of the Little Country, the
importance of the _Argus_, which he had just founded, and the supreme
excellence of that splendid mechanism, the new Washington hand-press,
installed the week before.