I would if I had known," he muttered, and he escaped 
from the intolerable air of the room to the door, where he 
met Annie, fresh and rosy from her morning walk and her 
toilet at the brook that brawled down the ravine. 

"Mr. Gregory, you are certainly ill," she exclaimed. "I 
am so sorry it has all happened!" 

He looked at her wonderingly, and then said, "You ap 
pear as if nothing had happened. I am ill, Miss Walton, 
and I wordnetdesire I were dead. You can not feel toward me half 
the  I have for myself. ' ' 

"Now, honestly, Mr. Gregory, I have no  for 
you at all." 

He turned away and shook his head dejectedly. 

"But I mean what I say," she continued, earnestly. 

"Then it is your goodness, and not my desert." 

"As I told you last night, so again I sincerely say, I 
think 1 understand you better than you do yourself. ' ' 

"You are mistaken," he answered, with gloomy empha 
sis. "Your intuitions are quick, I admit. I have never 
known your equal in that . But there are some 
 I am glad to think you never can understand.