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 "What made me ask you? Why, I asked you be- cause I love you."

The girl bent forward anxiously as though she were deaf. "You asked me because what? she quizzed him.

"Because I love you," he repeated.

She jumped up suddenly and ran across the room to him. "Because you love me?" she reiterated. " 'Love? Not Moved? Not past tense? Not all over and done with?"

There was no mistaking her meaning. But the man's face did not kindle, except with pain. Al most roughly he put his hands on her shoulders and searched down deep into her eyes. "Ruth," he probed, "what are you trying to do to me ? Open an old wound? You know I love you."

The girl's mouth smiled, but her eyes blurred wet with fright and tears.

"Would you care anything about marrying me now ?" she faltered.

Drew's face blanched utterly, and the change gave him such a horridly foreign, alien look that the girl drew away from his hands and scuttled back to the big chair, and began all over again to smooth and smooth the garish white skirt across her knees. "Oh, Drew, Drew," she pleaded, "please look like you. Please please don't look like anybody else."