“You thought you’d engage yourself to me—­and see how it worked out?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

A pause.  She knew what he was going to say next, and waited for him to say it.  At last it came.  “Well, now that there’s no deception, why shouldn’t you?”

“Somehow, I don’t seem to mind—­about Ross, so much.  It—­it was while I was in with father this evening.  You haven’t seen him since he became so ill, but you will understand why he is a rebuke to all mean thoughts.  I suppose I’ll be squirming again to-morrow, but to-night I feel—­”

“That Ross has done you a great service.  That you’ve lost nothing but a dangerous illusion; that you have been honorable with him, and all the wrong and the shame are upon him.  You must feel it, for it is true.”

Adelaide sighed.  “I wish I were strong enough to feel it with my friends jeering at me, as I can feel it now, Dory.”

He moved nearer the hammock in which she was sitting.  “Del,” he said, “shall we become engaged, with the condition that we’ll not marry unless we both wish to, when the time comes?”

“But you’re doing this only to help me—­to help me in a weakness I ought to be ashamed of.”

“Not altogether,” he replied.  “You on your part give me a chance to win you.  You will look at me differently—­and there’s a great deal in that, a very great deal, Del.”

She smiled—­laughed.  “I see what you mean.”

But he looked gravely at her.  “You promise to do your best to care?  An engagement is a very solemn thing, Del.  You promise?”

She put out her hand.  “Yes,” she answered.  And, after a moment, in tones he would have known meant opportunity had he been less in love with her, less modest about his own powers where she was concerned, she went on:  “The night you told me you loved me I did not sleep.  What you said—­what I saw when you opened your heart to me—­oh, Dory, I believed then, and I believe now, that the reason I have not loved you is because I am not worthy of you.  And I’m afraid I never can—­for just that reason.”

He laughed and kissed her hand.  “If that’s all that stands in the way,” said he, “you’ll love me to distraction.”

Her spirits went soaring as she realized that she had gained honorably all she had been tempted to gain by artifice.  “But you said a while ago,” she reminded him mischievously, “that you didn’t need me.”

“So I did,” said he, “but the fox shouldn’t be taken too literally as he talks about the grapes that are out of reach.”

Suddenly she was longing for him to take her in his arms and compel her to feel, and to yield to, his strength and his love.  But he, realizing that he was in danger of losing his self-control, released her hand and drew away—­to burn aloof, when he might have set her on fire.

Ross Whitney found his cousin, Ernest Belden, in the Chicago express next morning.  When they were well on their way, Belden said:  “I’m really sorry it’s all off between you and Adelaide, Ross.”