“I wanted you to understand,” she said, “and now I’ll have to tell you again.  It was because I was trying so hard not to meddle that I did.  I sent that little note to you just to get a chance to tell you not to mind my seeing you there with those others—­not to let it spoil your party.  I couldn’t bear to have you come to me to-day, or to-morrow or whenever it was, feeling—­well, ashamed you know, and explanatory.  That’s what I tried to tell you last night but couldn’t make you understand.  So I did, really, just exactly what I was meaning not to.  Of course, I loved you for coming away and I love having you here like this, all to myself.  But I didn’t mean to—­to spoil things for you.”

He stared at her a moment in blank inapprehension; then a deep blush came burning into his face.  “You didn’t understand,” he said thickly.  “You didn’t know what those girls were.”

“Oh, Rush!” she cried.  “Of course I did.  I knew exactly what they were—­better than you.  I even knew who they were.  They live not very far from here.”

He paled and his look was frightened.  “How did you know that?” he demanded.  “How could you know a thing like that?”

“They’ve lived here in the Village for years,” she said, summarizing Baldy without quoting him as her authority.  “One of them used to be an illustrator—­or something—­before she went—­over the edge.  They’re two of our celebrities.  One can’t go about, unless he’s stone blind, without picking up things like that.”

“You did know what she was, then,” he persisted, doggedly pushing through something it was almost impossible for him to say, “and yet, knowing, you asked me to leave you alone and go back to her.  You wanted me to do that?”

“I didn’t want you to!” she cried.  “I hated it, of course.  But men—­people—­do things like that, and I could see how—­natural it was that you wanted to.  And if you wanted to, I didn’t think it fair that it should be spoiled for you just because we happened to recognize each other.  I didn’t want you to hate me for having spoiled it.  That’s all.”

She gave him the minute or two he evidently needed for turning this over in his mind.  Then she turned her back on the window she had withdrawn to and began again.

“I used to be just a big sister to you, of course.  Ever so superior, I guess, and a good bit of a prig.  And all this time over there in France with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,—­as a sort of nice angel.  I’m not either, really.  I don’t want to be either.

“I want to be somebody you feel would understand anything; somebody you could tell anything to.  So that it would work the other way as well.  Because I’ve got to have somebody to tell things to,—­troubles, and worries.  And I’ve been hoping, ever since your letter came, that it would turn out to be you.”

“What sort of troubles?” He shot the question in rather tensely.