"I perhaps do not fully comprehend to what you refer.

Do you mean there was something between us?
Some special intimacy ?" "Oh, no; not that; probably no dream of what was occurring in your mind.
Yet the circumstances of our meeting were peculiar; they rendered a very brief acquaintance into what promised to become a real friendship." "How do you mean ?" "Surely you cannot have forgotten so soon," he exclaimed in surprise at her attitude, seating himself once more and facing her determinedly.

"I came to you in response to a strange advertisement; you trusted me so completely as to introduce me to your friends as your fiance, and later confided to me the special trouble you were in.

I pledged you my assistance, and it was surely very natural that, under these circumstances, I as a young man, should have become rather deeply interested--" "In both the case, and the girl." "Yes; so much so, indeed, that even when I was rather harshly dismissed, I could not accept it without a protest.

I had grown to feel that this was not a mere business arrangement between us.