“Jimmie,” said Miss Knowles, “I was cruel and heartless that day.  I’ve thought about it often.”

“You’ve thought!” cried the genial Jimmie.  “How had you time to think?  Where were all those ’anothers’?”

“There were none,” lied Miss Knowles soulfully with a disdainful backward glance toward Mr. Stevenson.  “For a time I thought there was one.  But whenever I thought of that last talk of ours—­you remember it, don’t you?”

“Of course.  I told you I was going to be married as soon as I came home.  Well, and so I am.”

“So you are.  But I used to think that if you hesitated to tell me; if you felt that I might still be hard about it and unsympathetic; if you decided to confide no more in me—­”

“But you would be sure to know.  Even if I had not telegraphed I never could have kept it a secret from you.”

“Not easily.  I should have been, as you observe, sure to know.  Do you remember how I always refused to believe you?  It was not until you were in that horrid Japan, where all the women are supposed to be beautiful—­”

“Yes,” Jimmie acquiesced.  “It was when I was in Japan.”

“It was then that it began to seem possible that you would be married when you came home.  It was then that I began to realize that I didn’t deserve to be told of your plans.  For I had been a fool, Jimmie.  You had been a fool, too, but not in the way you think.  And so, if you will sit where I sat that horrid day, we will begin that conversation all over again and end it differently.  The first speech was yours.  Do you remember it?”

“But I’m going to be married,” said Jimmie.

“Good boy.  He knows his lesson.  And now I say, ’To the most beautiful woman in the world?’”

“To the most beautiful woman God ever made.  The dearest, the most clever, the most simple.”

“Simple,” repeated Miss Knowles with some natural surprise.  “Did you say simple?”

“Simple and jolly and unaffected.  As true and as bright as the stars.  And I’m going to marry her—­”

“Now this,” Miss Knowles interjected, “is where the difference comes.  You are to sit quite still and listen to me because a thing like this—­however long and carefully one had thought it out—­is difficult in the saying.  So, I stand here before you where I can look at you; for four months are long; and where you may, when I have quite finished, kiss my hand again; for again four months are long.  And I begin thus:  Jimmie, you are going to be married—­”

“I told you first,” cried Jimmie.

“But I knew it first,” she countered, “to a woman who has learned to love you during the past three months, but who could not do it more utterly, more perfectly, if she had practiced through all the years that you and I have been friends.”

“So she says,” Jimmie interrupted with sudden heat.  “So she says.  God bless her!”

“And, ah, how she is fond of you.  ‘Fond’ is a darling of a word.  It keeps just enough of its old ‘foolish’ meaning to be human.  Proud of you, glad of you, fond of you—­I think that this is, perhaps, the time for you to kiss my hand.”