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 charged sense of all the proprieties which their relationship involved.

"Oh, don't be alarmed," exclaimed Hampstead, suddenly very earnest and respectful. "I am not leading up to anything. I do not misunderstand the nature of your goodness to me. I am not presuming anything. I am only telling you what I said to myself."

"Oh," murmured Bessie noncommittally, though she shivered for a moment as if a gust of wind had come again. Hampstead, feeling this, drew her still closer and hunched his broad shoulder to shelter her more, as he explained further:

"But it was I, you know, and there was nothing for me to do but to fly. I was for jumping out the window. And then you suddenly made that wonderful speech about going to the circus with dear old John, and your mother let it out that you wanted me to run around with you here, and I saw that toward me you were the same old Bessie; that for a few days we could be once more just friendly, only two finer friends, because we're both grown up now."

"Yes," Bessie sighed, almost contentedly. "I did want you, John. A girl gets tired of society, of clubs and dances and things, even in High. You know, I get weary of the sight of these slim, pompadoured boys sometimes. I just wanted somehow to feel the arm of a real man, to hear him talk, even if he does nothing but talk about himself, and until this minute in three days has not confessed that I have dimples, and—and a heart."

"Slow, about some things, am I not?" confessed John. "Awfully, awfully slow!"

"I will agree with you," said Bessie, with a mournfulness that literally compelled him to perceive that she was some way disappointed in him.

"But," he inquired reproachfully, "aside from my use-