“Is it some trouble you’ve got into?  I shall stand by you!”

“Oh, you splendid girl!  The trouble’s over, but it’s something you can’t stand by me in, I guess.  You know that girl I wrote to you about—­the one I met at the college tea, and—­”

“Yes!  Miss Lynde!”

“Come on!  We can’t stay here talking.  Let’s go down and sit on your porch.”  She mechanically obeyed him, and they started on together down the hill again; but she did not offer to take his arm, and he kept the width of the roadway from her.

“What about her?” she quietly asked.

“Last night I ended up the flirtation I’ve been carrying on with her ever since.”

“I want to know just what you mean, Jeff.”

“I mean that last week I got engaged to her, and last night I broke with her.”  Cynthia seemed to stumble on something; he sprang over and caught. her, and now she put her hand in his arm, and stayed herself by him as they walked.

“Go on,” she said.

“That’s all there is of it.”

“No!” She stopped, and then she asked, with a kind of gentle bewilderment:  “What did you want to tell me for?”

“To let you break with me—­if you wanted to.”

“Don’t you care for me any more?”

“Yes, more than ever I did.  But I’m not fit for you, Cynthia.  Mr. Westover said I wasn’t.  I told him about it—­”

“What did he say?”

“That I ought to break with you.”

“But if you broke with her?”

“He told me to stick to her.  He was right about you, Cynthy.  I’m not fit for you, and that’s a fact.”

“What was it about that girl?  Tell me everything.”  She spoke in a tone of plaintive entreaty, very unlike the command she once used with Jeff when she was urging him to be frank with her and true to himself.  They had come to her father’s house and she freed her hand from his arm again, and sat down on the step before the side door with a little sigh as of fatigue.

“You’ll take cold,” said Jeff, who remained on foot in front of her.

“No,” she said, briefly.  “Go on.”

“Why,” Jeff began, harshly, and with a note of scorn for himself and his theme in his voice, “there isn’t any more of it, but there’s no end to her.  I promised Mr. Westover I shouldn’t whitewash myself, and I sha’n’t.  I’ve been behaving badly, and it’s no excuse for me because she wanted me to.  I began to go for her as soon as I saw that she wanted me to, and that she liked the excitement.  The excitement is all that she cared for; she didn’t care for me except for the excitement of it.  She thought she could have fun with me, and then throw me over; but I guess she found her match.  You couldn’t understand such a girl, and I don’t brag of it.  All she cared for was to flirt with me, and she liked it all the more because I was a jay and she could get something new out of it.  I can’t explain it; but I could see it right along.  She fooled herself more than she fooled me.”