"The night you proposed to me?" Howard said, pulling her ear.

She smiled faintly and continued: "I thought it all out that night. I
intended to come back just as I did. I went deliberately. I----"

Howard put his hand over her lips.

"O, I am not going to tell anything,", said she, evading his fingers. "Only
this--that I understood you then, understood just why you would never
marry. Not so clearly as I understand it now, but still I--understood. And
you have been teaching me ever since, teaching me manners, teaching me how
to read and think and talk. And more than all, you've taught me your way of
looking at life."

Howard held her away from him and studied her face, surprise in his eyes.
"Isn't it strange?" he said.

"Here I've been seeing you day after day all this time, have had a chance
to know you better than I ever knew any one in my life, have had you very
near to me day and night. And just now, as I look at you, I see the real
you for the first time in two years."

"I have been wondering when you would look at me again," said Alice with a
small, sly smile.

"Why, you are a woman grown. Where is the little girl I knew, the little
girl who used to look up to me?"

"Oh, she's gone these two years. She proposed to you and, when you refused