“What makes you think so?” he asked somewhat confusedly.

“You do.”

He sprang up and paced the room a few moments, then confronted her with the words, “You shall have the whole truth.  Any woman that I would ask to be my wife is entitled to that,” and he told her just what the attitude of his mind had been from the first.

She laughed outright, then gave him her hand as she said, “Your honesty insures that we can be very good friends; but I don’t wish to hear anything more about suits which are close of kin to lawsuits.”

He looked very dejected, feeling that he had blundered fatally in his precipitation.

“Come now, Hedley, be sensible,” she resumed, half laughing, half serious.  “As you say, we can be frank with each other.  Why, only the other day we were boy and girl together coasting downhill on the same sled.  You are applying your legal jargon to a deep experience, to something sacred—­the result, to my mind, of a divine instinct.  Neither you nor I have ever felt for each other this instinctive preference, this subtle gravitation of the heart.  Don’t you see?  Your head has been concerned about me, and only your head.  By a kindred process you would select one bale of merchandise in preference to another.  Good gracious!  I’ve faults enough.  You’ll meet some other girl that will stand some other test far better than I. I want a little of what you call silly romance in my courtship.  See; I can talk about this suit as coolly and fluently as you can.  We’d make a nice pair of lovers, about as frigid as the ice-water you waded through so good-naturedly;” and the girl’s laugh rang out merrily, awakening echoes in the old house.  Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell might rest securely when their daughter could laugh like that.  It was the mirth of a genuine American girl whose self-protection was better than the care of a thousand duennas.

He looked at her with honest admiration in his eyes, then rose quietly and said, “That’s fine, Carrie.  Your head’s worth two of mine, and you’d make the better lawyer.  You see through a case from top to bottom.  You were right—­I wasn’t in love with you; I don’t know whether I’m in love with you now, and you haven’t an infinitesimal spark for me.  Nevertheless, I begin my suit here and now, and I shall never withdraw it till you are engaged to another fellow.  So there!”

Carrie looked rather blank at this result of her reductio ad absurdum process; and he did not help her by adding, “A fellow isn’t always in love.  There must be a beginning; and when I arrive at this beginning under the guidance of reason, judgment, and observation, I don’t see as I’m any more absurd than the fellow who tumbles helplessly in love, he doesn’t know why.  What becomes of all these people who have divine gravitations?  You and I both know of some who had satanic repulsions afterward.  They used their eyes and critical faculties after marriage instead of before.  The romance exhaled