“And when it does come,” he urged, “may I be the first to know?”

She smiled a little gravely.

“Ah,” she answered, “I would not know myself that that day had come until I woke to the fact that I loved the man who had asked me to be his wife, and then it might be too late⁠—for you.”

“But now, at least,” he persisted, “you love no one.”

“Now,” she repeated, “I love⁠—no one.”

“And I may take such encouragement in that as I can?”

And then, suddenly, capriciously even, Laura, an inexplicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the one who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf between her fingers. In a low voice she said at last: