So, I can afford to be frank." She gave him a puzzled look.

She had known him all her life; they had played together almost every day until she was seventeen and went East, to school, with Janet Whitney.

It was while she was at home on her first long vacation that she had flirted with him, had trapped him into an avowal of love; and then, having made sure of the truth which her vanity of conquest and the fascination of his free and frank manliness for her, though she denied it to herself, had led her on to discover beyond doubt, she became conscience-stricken.

And she confessed to him that she loved Ross Whitney and was engaged to him; and he had taken the disclosure so calmly that she almost thought he, like herself, had been simply flirting.

And yet--She dimly understood his creed of making the best of the inevitable, and of the ridiculousness of taking oneself too seriously.