“Well—?”

“I asked you to come—­to say—­that I am,—­sorry—­,” her voice breaking.  “Daddy told me that he knew why—­you couldn’t fight—­”

“I didn’t intend that he should tell.”

“He didn’t,” eagerly, “not your reasons.  He said it was a—­confidence, and he couldn’t break his word.  But he knew that you were brave.  That the things the world is saying are all wrong.  Oh, I ought to go down on my knees.”

Her face was white, her eyes deep wells of tears.

“It is I,” he said, very low, “who should be on my knees—­do you know what it means to me to have you tell me this?”

“I wasn’t sure that I ought to write.  To some men I couldn’t have written—­”

His face lighted.  “When your note came—­I can’t tell you what it meant to me.  I shouldn’t like to think of what this day would have been for me if you had not written.  Everybody is calling me—­a coward.  You know that.  You heard Witherspoon just now pitying me, not in words, but his manner.”

“Oh, Ralph,” how easily she disposed of him.  “Ralph crows, like a—­rooster.”

They looked at each other and tried to laugh.  But they were not laughing in their hearts.

He lifted her hand and kissed it—­then he stood well away from her, anchoring himself again to the silken tassel.  “Now that you know a part,” he said, from that safe distance, “I’d like to tell you all of it, if I may.”

As he talked her fingers were busy with her knitting, but there came moments when she laid it down and looked up at him with eyes that mirrored his own earnestness.

“It—­it hasn’t been easy,” he said in conclusion, “but—­but if you will be my friend, nothing will be hard.”

She tried to speak—­was shaken as if by a strong wind, and her knitting went up as a shield.

“My dear, you are crying,” he said, and was on his knees beside her.

And now they were caught in the tide of that mighty wave which was sweeping the world!

When at last she steadied herself, he was again anchored to the rose-colored tassel.

“You—­you must forgive me—­but—­it has been so good to talk it out—­to some one—­who cared.  I had never dreamed until that night in the Toy Shop of anybody—­like you.  Of anybody so—­adorable.  When your note came this morning, I couldn’t believe it.  But now I know it is true.  And that night of Cinderella you were so—­heavenly.”

It was a good thing that Miss Emily came in at that moment—­for his eloquence was a burning flood, and Jean was swept up and on with it.

The entrance of Emily, strictly tailored and practical, gave them pause.

“You remember Mr. Drake, don’t you, Emily?”

Emily did, of course.  But she had not expected to see him here.  She held out her hand.  “I remember that he was coming back for more of your Lovely Dreams.”

“I want all of her dreams,” said Derry, and something in the way that he said it took Miss Emily’s breath away.  “Please don’t sell them to anyone else.  You have a wholesale order from me.”