Several demurrers now arose, for nobody seemed to think that I would want such an ugly skin as that.

“Ugly!” cried Percy, who was evidently very anxious to pursue his study of comparative anatomy.  “It’s a magnificent skin.  Look at that long, heavy fur.  Why, if you take that skin and have it all cleaned, and combed out, and dyed some nice color, it will be fit to put into any room.”

Genevieve was in favor of combing and cleaning, oiling and dyeing the hide of the bear without taking it off.

“If you would do that,” she declared, “he would be a beautiful bear, and we would give him away.  They would be glad to have him at Central Park.”

The Larramies would not listen to my leaving that day.  There were a good many people in the house, but there was room enough for me, and, when we had left the bear without solving the problem of his final disposition, there were so many things to be done and so many things to be said that it was late in the afternoon before Miss Edith found the opportunity of speaking to me for which she had been waiting so long.

“Well,” said she, as we walked together away from the golf links, but not towards the house, “what have you to report?”

“Report?” I repeated, evasively.

“Yes, you promised to do that, and I always expect people to fulfil their promises to me.  You came here by the way of the Holly Sprig Inn, didn’t you?”

I assented.  “A very roundabout way,” she said.  “It would have been seven miles nearer if you had come by the cross-road.  But I suppose you thought you must go there first.”

“That is what I thought,” I answered.

“Have you been thinking about her all the time you have been away?”

“Nearly all the time.”

“And actually cut off a big slice of your vacation in order to see her?”

I replied that this was precisely the state of the case.

“But, after all, you weren’t successful.  You need not tell me anything about that—­I knew it as soon as I saw you this morning.  But I will ask you to answer one thing:  Is the decision final?”

I sighed—­I could not help it, but she did not even smile.  “Yes,” I said, “the affair is settled definitely.”

For a minute or so we walked on silently, and then she said:  “I do not want you to think I am hard-hearted, but I must say what is in me.  I congratulate you, and, at the same time, I am sorry for her.”

At this amazing speech I turned suddenly towards her, and we both stopped.

“Yes,” said she, standing before me with her clear eyes fixed upon my face, “you are to be congratulated.  I think it is likely she is the most charming young woman you are ever likely to meet—­and I know a great deal more about her than you do, for I have known her for a long time, and your acquaintance is a very short one—­she has qualities you do not know anything about; she is lovely!  But for all that it would be very wrong for you to marry her, and I am glad she had sense enough not to let you do it.”