judge the lady over harshly, nor always by appearances. She may have
flouted you as a boyish lover, and yet I think--"

I stopped in sheer bewilderment, shot through and through with keenest
agonies of remorseful recollection. For at the moment I had clean forgot
the gulf impassable I had set between these two. So I would have lapsed
into shamed silence, but Jennifer would not suffer it.

"Well, what is it that you think?" he demanded.

"I think--nay, I may say I know that she thinks well of you, Dick," I
blundered on, seeing no way to put him off.

He gripped my hand, and in his eyes there was the light of the old love
reawakening.

"Don't lift me up to fling me down again, Jack! How can you know what
she thinks of me?" he broke in, eagerly.

I should have told him then all there was to tell. He had been thrice my
savior, and his heart was soft and malleable on the side of friendship.
I knew it--knew that the pregnant moment for full confession had
arrived; and yet I could not force my tongue to shape the words. Indeed,
I saw more clearly than before that never any word of mine could make
him understand that I was not a faithless traitor in intention. So I
paltered with the truth, like any wretched coward of them all.

"You forget that I have come to know her well," I said. "I was a month
or more under the same roof with her, and in that time she told me many
things."