“Dears,” said she, “you are going abroad?”

“Yes,” Charles Edward answered.  “Yes, it looks that way now.”

“Yes,” said Lorraine, rather sharply, I thought, as if she meant to show him he ought to be more decisive, “we are.”

“Dears,” Aunt Elizabeth went on, “will you take me with you?”

Mr. Dane started as if he meant to go back into the house.  I must have started, too, and my heart beat hard.  There was a silence of a minute, two minutes, three perhaps.  Then I heard Charles Edward speak, in a voice I didn’t know he had.

“No, Aunt Elizabeth, no.  Not so you’d notice it.”

Mr. Dane gave a nod as if he were relieved, and we both began tiptoeing down the path in the dark.  But it wasn’t dark any more.  The moon was coming through the locust-trees, and I smelled the lindens by the wall.  “Oh,” I said, “it’s summer, isn’t it?  I don’t believe I’ve thought of summer once this year.”

“Yes,” said he, “and there never was a summer such as this is going to be.”

I knew he was very athletic, but I don’t believe I’d thought how much he cared for out-of-doors.  “Come down here,” I said.  “This is Lorraine’s jungle.  There’s a seat in it, and we can smell the ferns.”

Charles Edward had been watering the garden, and everything was sweet.  Thousands of odors came out such as I never smelled before.  And all the time the moon was rising.  After we had sat there awhile, talking a little about college, about my trip abroad, I suddenly found I could not go on.  There were tears in my eyes.  I felt as if so good a friend ought to know how I had behaved—­for I must have been very weak and silly to make such a mistake.  He ought to hear the worst about me.  “Oh,” I said, “do you know what happened to me?”

He made a little movement toward me with both hands.  Then he took them back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice:  “I know you are going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you played with when you were a child.”  But I cried, softly, though, because it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry, sorry for myself—­and ashamed.  Until now I’d never known how ashamed I was.  “Don’t cry, child,” he was saying.  “For God’s sake, don’t cry!” I think it came over me then, as it hadn’t before, that all that part of my life was spoiled.  I’d been engaged and thought I liked somebody, and now it was all over and done.  “I don’t know what I’m crying for,” I said, at last, when I could stop.  “I suppose it’s because I’m different now, different from the other girls, different from myself.  I can’t ever be happy any more.”

He spoke, very quickly.  “Is it because you liked Goward so much?”

“Like him!” I said.  “Like Harry Goward?  Why, I—­” There I stopped, because I couldn’t think of any word small enough, and I think he understood, for he laughed out quickly.

“Now,” said he, “I’m a psychologist.  You remember that, don’t you?  It used to impress you a good deal.”