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 “this is not so bad as you think. Are you satisfied?”



“No, I am not,” she said; “you told me yourself that you never sent for me to pose, and I thought—I thought” and then she cried so hard I felt sorry for her. He got quite red.

“I swear I can’t remember what I did say,” he sort of muttered, and he looked at me.

“You did ask for her,” I said, “only you didn’t pay much attention. There wasn’t anybody to pose and you said, ‘by all means,’ and”

“Why, of course—I remember perfectly,” he said. “The child is quite right, Katharine.”

“And I suppose you don’t remember that you said ‘the prettiest face didn’t make the prettiest picture—it was what was in the face’?” she said, right into her handkerchief.

He jumped and gave me the strangest look. I felt almost afraid of him.

“I haven’t forgotten it at all,” he said, very calm; “I did say it.”

She looked at him a minute then, and smiled a little.

“Really?” she asked him, and then she began to cry again.

“But why should you think of me?” she said. “I thought you did all those things, but what did you think I did? What made you” And then she cried so hard she couldn’t talk plain.

“You wait here,” he told me. Then he went over and kneeled down by her and took hold of her hand. (You see he did know something.) I felt so bad by that time I wished I’d never been born. It was dreadful and solemn and all mixed up.

“Katharine,” he said to her, and I’ll never forget a word of what he said if I live to be thirty or forty, “I don’t want to begin our life together by lying to you. Suppose that we do owe our happiness to the mistakes and stupidities of some ignorant children, is it any the less happiness? Are you very wise to scorn it for that reason? What difference does it make how I came to think you the sweetest woman I know, so that I do think so? And you know I do. Do you wish me to believe that your love was not real?”

“No,” she said, sort of gulping; and so did I.

“Then do you wish me to leave you, in spite of the fact that we love each other?” he said, very low down, but very plain.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” she said, and she put her arms around his neck and I began to cry too—I couldn’t help it.

He held out his hand to me, and I came over by them. I just loved him.

“Now,” he said, “I am going to ask you both to promise me something. I want you, Katharine, to make me a present of this promise to show your trust in me. Will you promise never to mention this matter to me or to anyone again under any circumstances, and not to pursue it further, directly or indirectly, in the slightest degree?”

“Oh, I can’t,” she said. “Don’t ask me!” Rh