She paused, not knowing how to proceed.

"Then there is some one," cried Paul earnestly. "I thought as much.
Who might the gentleman be?"

"Yourself!" exclaimed Dorothy, her eyes still fixed upon the ground.

"Myself!" shouted he in amazement. "Do you mean to say that I should
oppose my own marriage with the girl I love?"

"You might," she answered demurely, casting a side glance up at him,
and allowing the very faintest, saddest kind of smile to rest for an
instant upon her face.

"Well!" said Paul, "I do not suppose you will explain what you mean,
but it would be only natural that I should like to know."

"I only mean," she replied, resuming her meditative attitude, "that
you do not know me; that you neither know who nor what I am. If I did
not love you, I might deceive and entrap you, but not under the
circumstances."

Later they returned to the house.




7