“Yes, that’s it,” answered Geary.  “You see they don’t know for sure; no one knows, but all at once every one seemed to be talking about it, and they suspect an awful lot.  I guess they are pretty near right, aren’t they?” He did not wait for an answer, but laughed clumsily and went on:  “You see, you always have to be awfully careful in those things, or you’ll get into a box.  Ah, you bet I don’t let any girl I go with know my last name or my address if I can help it.  I’m clever enough for that; you have to manage very carefully; ah, you bet!  You ought to have looked out for that, old man!” He paused a moment and then went on:  “Oh, I guess it will be all right, all right, in a little while.  They will forget about it, you know.  I wouldn’t worry.  I guess it will be all right.”

“Yes,” answered Vandover absently, “I guess so—­perhaps.”

A few days later Vandover was in the reading-room of the Mechanics Library, listlessly turning over the pages of a volume of l’Art.  It was Saturday morning and the place was full of ladies who were downtown for their shopping and marketing, and who had come in either to change their books or to keep appointments with each other.  On a sudden Vandover saw Turner just passing into the Biography alcove.  He got up and followed her.  She was standing at the end of the dim book-lined tunnel, searching the upper shelves, her head and throat bent back, and her gloved finger on her lip.  The faint odour of the perfume she always affected came to him mingled with the fragrance of the jonquils at her belt and the smell of leather and of books that exhaled from the shelves on either side.  He did not offer to take her hand, but came up slowly, speaking in a low voice.

It was the last time that Vandover ever met Turner Ravis.  They talked for upward of an hour, leaning against the opposite book-shelves, Vandover with his fists in his pockets, his head bent down, and the point of his shoe tracing the pattern in the linoleum carpet; Turner, her hands clasped in front of her, looking him squarely in the face, speaking calmly and frankly.

“Now, I hope you see just how it is, Van,” she said at length.  “What has happened hasn’t made me cease to care for you, because if I had really cared for you the way I thought I did, the way a girl ought to care for the man she wants to marry, I would have stood by you through everything, no matter what you did.  I don’t do so now, because I find I don’t care for you as much as I thought I did.  What has happened has only shown me that.  I’m sorry, oh, so sorry to be disappointed in you, but it’s because I only think of you as being once a very good friend of mine, not because I love you as you think I did.  Once—­a long time ago—­when we first knew each other, then, perhaps—­things were different then.  But somehow we seem to have grown away from that.  Since then we have both been mistaken; you thought I cared for you in that