choking cry that betrayed her presence. Jasper Dale sprang up and
gazed upon her. He saw her standing there, amid the languorous
shadows of August, pale with feeling, wide-eyed, trembling.

For a moment shyness wrung him. Then every trace of it was
banished by a sudden, strange, fierce anger that swept over him.
He felt outraged and hurt to the death; he felt as if he had been
cheated out of something incalculably precious--as if sacrilege
had been done to his most holy sanctuary of emotion. White, tense
with his anger, he looked at her and spoke, his lips as pale as if
his fiery words scathed them.

"How dare you? You have spied on me--you have crept in and
listened! How dare you? Do you know what you have done, girl? You
have destroyed all that made life worth while to me. My dream is
dead. It could not live when it was betrayed. And it was all I
had. Oh, laugh at me--mock me! I know that I am ridiculous! What
of it? It never could have hurt you! Why must you creep in like
this to hear me and put me to shame? Oh, I love you--I will say
it, laugh as you will. Is it such a strange thing that I should
have a heart like other men? This will make sport for you! I, who
love you better than my life, better than any other man in the
world can love you, will be a jest to you all your life. I love
you--and yet I think I could hate you--you have destroyed my
dream--you have done me deadly wrong."

"Jasper! Jasper!" cried Alice, finding her voice. His anger hurt
her with a pain she could not endure. It was unbearable that
Jasper should be angry with her. In that moment she realized that
she loved him--that the words he had spoken when unconscious of