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By Root 20425 0

spoken love first. How many men propose marriage to their women across the drawing-room or from chair to chair? Absurd! The eyes speak first, then the arms, the lips last. The woman is in his arms before he tells his love. It is by her response that he gauges his chances and speaks of marriage. Actually the thing is already settled; tardy speech only follows on swift instinct. Stewart, wooing as men woo, would have taken the girl's hand, gained an encouragement from it, ventured to kiss it, perhaps, and finding no rebuff would then and there have crushed her to him; What need of words? They would follow in due time, not to make a situation but to clarify it.

But he could not woo as men woo. The barrier of his own weakness stood between them and must be painfully taken down.

"I'm afraid this is stupid for you," said Anita out of the silence. "Would you like to go to the music-room?"

"God forbid. I was thinking."

"Of what?" Encouragement this, surely.

"I was thinking how you had come into my life, and stirred it up."

"Really? I?"

"You know that."

"How did I stir it up?"

"That's hardly the way I meant to put it. You've changed everything for me. I care for you--a very great deal."

He was still carefully in hand, his voice steady. And still he did not touch her. Other men had made love to her, but never in this fashion, or was he making love?

"I'm very glad you like me."

"Like you!" Almost out of hand that time. The thrill in his voice was unmistakable. "It's much more than that, Anita, so much more that I'm going to try to do a hideously hard thing. Will you help a little?"

"Yes, if I can." She was stirred, too, and rather frightened.

Stewart drew his chair nearer to her and sat forward, his face set and dogged.

"Have you any idea how you were hurt? Or why?"

"No. There's a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all these places, isn't there?"

"This was not an accident."

"No?"

"The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send us over the bank. It was murder, if intention is crime."

After a brief silence--

"Somebody who wished to kill you, or me?"

"Both of us, I believe. It was done by a woman--a girl, Anita. A girl I had been living with."

A brutal way to tell her, no doubt, but admirably courageous. For he was quivering with dread when he said it--the courage of the man who faces a cannon. And here, where a less-poised woman would have broken into speech, Anita took the refuge of her kind and was silent. Stewart watched her as best he could in the darkness, trying to gather further courage to go on. He could not see her face, but her fingers, touching the edge of the chair, quivered.

"May I tell you the rest?"

"I don't think I want to hear it."

"Are you going to condemn me unheard?"

"There isn't anything you can say against the fact?"

But there was much to say, and sitting there in the darkness he made his plea. He made no attempt to put his case. He told what had happened simply; he told of his loneliness and discomfort. And he emphasized the lack of sentiment that prompted the arrangement.

Anita spoke then for the first time: "And when you tried to terminate it she attempted to kill you!"

"I was acting the beast. I brought her up here, and then neglected her for you."

"Then it was hardly only a business arrangement for her."

"It was at first. I never dreamed of any thing else. I swear that, Anita. But lately, in the last month or two, she--I suppose I should have seen that she--"

"That she had fallen in love with you. How old is she?"

"Nineteen."

A sudden memory came to Anita, of a slim young girl, who had watched her with wide, almost childish eyes.

"Then it was she who was in the compartment with you on the train coming up?"

"Yes."

"Where is she now?"

"In Vienna. I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came up to see me after the--after the accident, sent her away. I think he's looking after her. I haven't heard from him."

"Why did you tell me all this?"

"Because I love you, Anita. I want you to marry me."

"What! After that?"

"That, or something similar,