“Tw-oo!  Tw-oo!” It was the canary starting on a preliminary carol.

“So I thought it best,” she concluded tremulously, “not to see you again.  It would only be two days, and after that it would be easier.  I could always be thinking of you just the same, Mr. Lancelot, always.  That wouldn’t annoy you, sir, would it?  Because you know, sir, you wouldn’t know it.”

Lancelot was struggling to find a voice.  “But didn’t you forget something you had to do, Mary Ann?” he said in hoarse accents.

She raised her eyes swiftly a moment, then lowered them again.

“I don’t know; I didn’t mean to,” she said apologetically.

“Didn’t you forget that I told you to come to me and get my answer to your question?”

“No, sir, I didn’t forget.  That was what I was thinking of all night.”

“About your asking me to marry you?”

“Yessir.”

“And my saying it was impossible?”

“Yessir, and I said, ‘Why is it impossible?’ and you said, ‘Because—­’ and then you left off; but please, Mr. Lancelot, I didn’t want to know the answer this morning.”

“But I want to tell you.  Why don’t you want to know?”

“Because I found out for myself, Mr. Lancelot.  That’s what I found out when I was crying—­but there was nothing to find out, sir.  I knew it all along.  It was silly of me to ask you—­but you know I am silly sometimes, sir, like I was when my mother was dying.  And that was why I made up my mind not to bother you any more, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn’t like to tell me straight out.”

“And what was the answer you found out?  Ah, you won’t speak.  It looks as if you don’t like to tell me straight out.  Come, come, Mary Ann, tell me why—­why—­it is impossible.”

She looked up at last and said slowly and simply, “Because I am not good enough for you, Mr. Lancelot.”

He put his hands suddenly to his eyes.  He did not see the flood of sunlight—­he did not hear the mad jubilance of the canary.

“No, Mary Ann,” his voice was low and trembling.  “I will tell you why it is impossible, I didn’t know last night, but I know now.  It is impossible, because—­you are right, I don’t like to tell you straight out.”

She opened her eyes wide, and stared at him in puzzled expectation.

“Mary Ann,” he bent his head, “it is impossible—­because I am not good enough for you.”

Mary Ann grew scarlet.  Then she broke into a little nervous laugh.  “Oh, Mr. Lancelot, don’t make fun of me.”

“Believe me, my dear,” he said tenderly, raising his head; “I wouldn’t make fun of you for two million million dollars.  It is the truth—­the bare, miserable, wretched truth.  I am not worthy of you, Mary Ann.”

“I don’t understand you, sir,” she faltered.