it hurt me dreadfully. You're angry now, and suspicious. You seem to think I must have done some dreadful thing. I know what you're thinking. The Gazette hinted at some 'affair' between me and Mr. Bush; that possibly that was a sort of left-handed reparation for ruining me. If that didn't make me angry, it would amuse me—it's so absurd. Haven't you any faith in me at all? I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. I've got nothing to conceal."

"Don't conceal it, then," Barrow muttered sulkily. "I've got a right to know whatever there is to know if I'm going to marry you. You don't seem to have any idea what this sort of talk that's going around means to a man."

Hazel stopped short and faced him. Her heart pounded sickeningly, and hurt pride and rising anger choked her for an instant. But she managed to speak calmly, perhaps with added calmness by reason of the struggle she was compelled to make for self-control.

"If you are going to marry me," she repeated, "you have got a right to know all there is to know. Have I refused to explain? I haven't had much chance to explain yet. Have I refused to tell you anything? If you ever thought of anybody beside yourself, you might be asking yourself how all this talk would affect a girl like me. And, besides, I think from your manner that you've already condemned me—for what? Would any reasonable explanation make an impression on you in your present frame of mind? I don't want to marry you if you can't trust me. Why, I couldn't—I wouldn't—marry you any time, or any place, under those conditions, no matter how much I may foolishly care for you."

"There's just one thing, Hazel," Barrow persisted stubbornly. "There must have been something between you and Bush. He sent flowers to you, and I myself saw when he was hurt he sent his carriage to bring you to his house. And then he leaves you this money. There was something between you, and I want to know what it was. You're not helping yourself by getting on your dignity and talking about my not trusting you instead of explaining these things."

"A short time ago," Hazel told him quietly, "Mr. Bush asked me to marry him. I refused, of course. He—"

"You refused!" Barrow interrupted cynically. "Most girls would have jumped at the chance."

"Jack!" she protested.

"Well," Barrow defended, "he was almost a millionaire, and I've got nothing but my hands and my brain. But suppose you did refuse him. How does that account for the five thousand dollars?"

"I think," Hazel flung back passionately, "I'll let you find that out for yourself. You've said enough now to make me hate you almost. Your very manner's an insult."

"If you don't like my manner—" Barrow retorted stormily. Then he cut his sentence in two, and glared at her. Her eyes glistened with slow-welling tears, and she bit nervously at her under Up. Barrow shrugged his shoulders. The twin devils of jealousy and distrust were riding him hard, and it flashed over Hazel that in his mind she was prejudged, and that her explanation, if she made it, would only add fuel to the flame. Moreover, she stood in open rebellion at being, so to speak, put on the rack.

She turned abruptly and left him. What did it matter, anyway? She was too proud to plead, and it was worse than useless to explain.

Even so, womanlike, she listened, expecting to hear Jack's step hurrying up behind. She could not imagine him letting her go like that. But he did not come, and when, at a distance of two blocks, she stole a backward glance, he had disappeared.

She returned to the boarding-house. The parlor door stood wide, and the curious, quickly averted glance of a girl she knew sent her quivering up to her room. Safe in that refuge, she sat down by the window, with her chin on her palms, struggling with the impulse to cry, protesting with all her young strength against the bitterness that had come to her through no fault of her own. There was only one cheerful gleam. She loved Jack Barrow. She believed that he loved her, and she could not believe—she could not conceive—him capable of keeping aloof, obdurate and unforgiving, once he got out of the black mood he was in. Then she could snuggle up close to him and tell him how and why Mr. Andrew Bush had struck at her from his deathbed.

She was still sitting by the window, watching the yellow crimson of the sunset, when some one rapped at her door. A uniformed messenger boy greeted her when she opened it: