Who Goes There!

"Could you learn to love me?"

"Learn? I don't know," she mused aloud, apparently much interested in the novelty of the suggestion. "I learn some things easily; mathematics I never could learn. Why are you scowling, Kervyn?"

"Could you ever love me?" he persisted, doggedly.

"I don't know. Do you desire to pay your court to me?"

"I – yes – "

"You appear to be uncertain. It seems to me that a man ought to know whether or not he desires to pay his addresses to a girl."

"Can't you be serious, Karen!"

"Indeed I can. You ought to know it, too. I was serious enough over you, once. I followed you about so faithfully and persistently that even when you took a nap I did it too – "

"Karen, do you love me?"

"I don't know."

"Will you try?"

"I'm always willing to try anything – once."

"Then suppose you try marrying me, once!" he said, bluntly.

"But oughtn't a girl to be in love before she tries that? Besides, before I am quite free to converse with you on that subject I must converse with someone else."

"What!"

"Had you forgotten?"

"Do you mean the – "

"Yes," she said hastily – "you do remember. That is a prior engagement."

"Engagement!"

"An engagement to converse on the subject of engagements. I told you about it – in the days of my communicative innocence."

He was patient because he had to be.

"After you have made your answer clear to him, may I ask you again?"

"Ask me what?"

"To marry me."

"Wouldn't that permission depend upon what answer I may give him?"

"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "is there any doubt about your answer to him?"

She lifted her eyebrows: "You are entirely too confident. Must I first ask your permission to fulfill my obligations and then accomplish them in a manner that suits your views? It sounds a little like dictation, Kervyn."

He walked beside her, cogitating in gloom and silence. Was this the girl he had known? Was this the same ungrateful and capricious creature upon whom he had bestowed his protection, his personal interest, his anxious thoughts?

That he had fallen in love with her had surprised him, but it did not apparently surprise her. Had she instinctively foreseen what was going to happen to him? Had she deliberately watched the process with wise and feminine curiosity, coolly keeping her own skirts clear?

And the more he cogitated, the deeper and more complex appeared to him her intuitive and merciless knowledge of man.

Never had he beheld such lightning change in a woman. It couldn't be a change; all this calm self-possession, all the cool badinage, all this gaiety, this laughing malice, this serene capacity for appraising man and his motives must have existed in her – hidden, not latent; concealed, not embryotic!

He was illogical and perfectly masculine.

She was only a young girl, awakened, and making her first campaign.

CHAPTER XVIII

LESSE FOREST

As they came out of the forest and crossed the grassy circle where the fountain was splashing they saw an automobile standing in the drive by the front door.

"What does that mean?" exclaimed Guild, under his breath.

Both had halted, checked by the same impulse.

"Is it likely to be Baron von Reiter?" he asked, coldly.

She said, with admirable composure: "Whoever it is, we shall have to go in."

"Yes, of course… But if it happens to be the Baron – "

"Well?" she asked, looking away from him.

"In that event, have you nothing to say to me —now?"

"Not now."

"Haven't you, Karen?"

She shook her head, gazing steadily away from him.

"All right," he said, controlling his voice; "then I can make my adieux to you indoors as well as here."

"Are you leaving immediately?"

"Yes. I should have left this morning."

After a moment's silence: "Shall I hear from you?"