Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/36

 children on opposite sides of the then fashionable quarter of Gramercy Park, and had played together in the dusty city garden through the long days when from Sunday to Sunday seemed half a lifetime. They had fallen in love of course, and when Gladys was seventeen and Farwell twenty-two, there had been an "understanding" between them. This was one of those "understandings" into which American girls are apt to enter, sometimes with more than one man at a time, in which the maiden is left quite free, and the man is bound unconditionally.

Gladys did not know her own mind,—how could she, not having seen anything of the world? She thought she loved her cousin, and was sure she cared more for him than for any other man,—but she could not promise.

Well, he would wait (they always do); and after waiting for three years, during which time he had the doubtful happiness