“Don’t you want to care for me—­that way?”

“Not that way, Scott.”

“Why?”

“I’ve told you.  I am so much older——­”

“Couldn’t you, all the same?”

She was trembling inwardly.  She leaned against a white birch-tree and passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished hair.

“No, I couldn’t,” she whispered.

The boy walked to the edge of the brook.  Past him hurried the sun-tipped ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead, big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of amber against the bottom sands.

One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence, waiting.  And after a while he turned and came back to her: 

“I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when—­when—­you remember, don’t you?”

She did not answer.

“I don’t know how it happened,” he said:  “something about you did it.  I want to say that I’ve loved you ever since.  It’s made me serious....  I haven’t bothered with girls since.  You are the only woman who interests me.  I think about you most of the time when I’m not doing something else,” he explained naively.  “I know perfectly well I’m in love with you because I don’t dare touch you—­and I’ve never thought of—­of kissing you good-night as we used to before that night last spring....  You remember that we didn’t do it that night, don’t you?”

Still no answer, and Kathleen’s delicate, blue-veined hands were clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly.

“That was the reason,” he said.  “I don’t know how I’ve found courage to tell you.  I’ve often been afraid you would laugh at me if I told you....  If it’s only our ages—­you seem as young as I do....”  He looked up, hopefully; but she made no response.

The boy drew a long breath.

“I love you, anyway,” he said.  “And that’s how it is.”

She neither spoke nor stirred.

“I suppose,” he went on, “because I was such a beast of a boy, you can never forget it.”

“You were the sweetest, the best—­” Her voice broke; she swung about, moved away a few paces, stood still.  When he halted behind her she turned.

“Dearest,” she said tremulously, “let me give you what I can—­love, as always—­solicitude, companionship, deep sympathy in your pleasures, deep interest in your amusements....  Don’t ask for more; don’t think that you want more.  Don’t try to change the loyalty and love you have always had for something you—­neither of us understand—­neither of us ought to desire—­or even think of——­”

“Why?”

“Can’t you understand?  Even if I were not too old in years, I dare not give up what I have of you and Geraldine for this new—­for anything more hazardous....  Suppose it were so—­that I could venture to think I cared for you that way?  What might I put in peril?—­Geraldine’s affection for me—­perhaps her relations with you....  And the world is cynical, Scott, and you are wealthy even among very rich men, and I was your paid guardian—­quite penniless—­engaged to care for and instruct——­”