But he's been trying to meet her out on the cliffs, when the Miss Fennells take her for a walk. They met the other night. I suppose they've met before. I don't know how. But he's in love; I can see that. And she's engaged to be married to some one else. Now do you understand? Oh—my dear—my dear. Come along—don't think anything like that again. Come and count the buds on our rose trees." I heard them move away. I heard the sound of their lips as they kissed each other, then I turned over on my face and looked down into the forest of grass stems where I found a little ant hurrying impetuously along about his engrossing business. For half an hour I lay there watching him till he was out of sight. I think a divine Providence must have sent that ant. It occupied my mind to see him surmount all his difficulties. And then, just as I watched him disappear into a crevice of the sundial, I heard a scraping of feet and felt a rough tongue licking on my cheek. It was Dandy. I took him by both shoulders. I set him upon his hind legs, balanced awkwardly in front of me. "Look at me," said I. "Right into my face." His brown eyes gazed steadily into mine, so steadily indeed as his attitude would permit. "How long did it take you to know me so well that you forgot how ugly I was?" He shook his head, and he laughed; then I stood up, taking him in my arms like a baby—just as I had done on his release from quarantine in Odessa. "You're a good fella," said I. "You're a damn good fella." CHAPTER XIV I knew that I could not be very far wrong when I said Bellwattle had guessed I was in love. It is so like a woman. They are incapable of climbing to the summit of any other conclusion save this; what is more, they reach it where no foothold for conjecture seems possible. I knew Who but a woman, from such slender facts as Bellwattle has acquired by dint of persevering curiosity, would ever imagine that I am in love? Thank God, I am not so utterly in need of the mere rudiments of understanding. I know the truth of all that she said to Cruikshank. Women must know me well indeed before they can come to such tender thought of me as to forget that I am ugly. It is true, moreover, that no woman has ever taken the trouble. Why then should I be such a fool as to plunge myself in love? Yet, as I think over that
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