Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/152

 again, down here—it's all—all make-believe—somehow—but up there everything is so real" She stopped, lamely enough, knowing she could never give him the other reasons. How could she tell him, for instance, that she, a little country school-ma'am, didn't feel safe in trusting her happiness to one of the handsomest and richest young men in the whole United States? Or how could she tell him about Neil? Or about such things as Little Miss Moses and her pilgrimage to the Promised Land?

"You mean to say this isn't real?" asked Perry, sweeping his arm around to the house and grounds.

Charlotte buried her face in the roses he had given her and shook her head.

"And that's why you don't want it," he asked incredulously—"because it isn't real?"

For the moment she almost felt her heart stop beating, so close was she to the realization of her Third Great Sum.