"TO BE, OR NOT TO BE."

—Miss Muloch.

"It has been almost a month since I saw you," Conway says, drawing the small hand of Lulu within his arm as they saunter down a shady path where the crape myrtle boughs meet over their heads, showering pink blossoms in prodigal sweetness beneath their feet.

No answer. She is looking ahead at a little bird hopping timidly about the path, and only turns to him when he goes on pathetically:

"I have missed you so much."

"You know where I lived," she answers, dryly.

An amused smile outlines itself around the corners of his handsome mouth.

"So you think it is solely my own fault that I have missed you—have not seen you. Well, perhaps it is—yet——"

"Yet what?"

"Oh, nothing—it does not matter."

"No, I suppose not," she responds, a little scornfully. "Nothing seems to matter much to you, Mr. Conway. I believe you have found the fabled Lotos. It would suit you, and such as you,

"Whew! since when has my little Brownie learned to be sarcastic?" he queries, in genuine astonishment, trying to look into her face, but it is turned away from him, and she is idly stripping the thorns from the stem of a rose she has just broken. Ah! if she could only as easily eradicate the thorns that rankle in her gentle heart!

"Why don't you talk to me?" he says, pettishly.

"And have I not been talking?" turning an innocent, unconscious face toward him, a piquant smile on her lips.

"I know, but without taking any interest," he says, in an injured tone. "Don't you care to talk? Are you weary of me?"

"Weary of you!" she laughs. "Ah! that gives me a pretext to quote poetry to you," and she repeats, with a very faint tremor in her voice, the delicious lines of Mrs. Osgood:

He looks down into the faintly flushed face with a light, triumphant smile she does not see. He knows as well, and better than herself, how much she means the poetry that she has repeated in that light, jesting tone.

"Thank you," he answers only. "I wish I could think you meant it."

She stoops suddenly and breaks off a half-dozen great purplish velvet pansies from a bed on the side of the patch, and puts them into his hands.

"'There's pansies—that's for thoughts,'" she says, gayly. "Think what you will."

"May I think that you love me?" he queries, audaciously, as only Bruce Conway can do.

"I have said think what you will," she answers, growing suddenly crimson. "But why are you throwing my pansies away?"

A faint flush crimsons his fair forehead, too. Their eyes look at each other as he answers:

"I—I do not like pansies; they are too sad. Sometimes when I stroll down this path with my morning cigar, Lu, they look up at me bathed in glittering dew, and—I am not romantic, child, but they always remind me of blue eyes swimming in tears."

"They always remind me of the velvet darkness of Grace Winans' eyes," she says, meditatively.

"'There's rue!'" he says, and is suddenly silent. The little, irresistible feminine shaft has struck home.

He looks down at the flickering sunshine lying in spots on the graveled path, and reflects on the acute perceptions of woman—this little woman—in particular. She sees his pain, and is sorry.

"I wonder"—stirring up a little drift of pink blossoms on the path with the tip of her small slippered foot—"I wonder if all our life-path is to be flower-strewn!"

A light flashes into his handsome dark eyes as he clasps in his the small hand lying within his arm.

"Lulu dearest," he murmurs, "if you will promise to walk hand in hand with me through life, your path shall be strewn with all the flowers love's sunshine can warm into life."

A shiver thrills her from head to foot; the blue heavens darken above her head; the warm and fragrant air that rushes down the myrtle avenue sickens her almost to fainting. Passionate bliss is always closely allied to passionate pain.

"'To be, or not to be!'" he questions softly, bending over the drooping form, though he feels very sure in his heart what the answer will be.

She is silent, leaning more heavily on his arm, her face growing white and mournful.

"Dear, am I to take silence for consent?" he persists, as though talking to a petulant child who is going to yield, he knows. "I asked you is it to be or not to be?"

"Not."

She outdoes his usual laconics in this specimen of brevity. It is fully a minute before he recovers from his astonishment enough to laugh:

"Don't jest with me, Lulu, I am in earnest."

"So am I."

For answer he lifts her face and scrutinizes it closely. The soft gaze meets his—half-happy, half-grieved—like a doubtful child's.

"You are not in earnest, Lulu. You do love me—you will be my wife?"

"I cannot."

He stops still under a tall myrtle and puts his arm around her slim, girlish waist.

"Brownie, willful, teasing little fairy that you are—you cannot, you will not deny that you love me—can you, honestly, now?"

"I have not denied it—have I?" her gaze falling before his.

"Not in so many words, perhaps; but you refuse to be my wife—if you loved me, how could you?"

"If I loved you I would still refuse."

"Brownie, why?"

"Because——"

"That is a woman's reason. Give me a better one."

"How can I, a woman, give you a better one?" she answers, evasively, tilting the brim of her hat a little further over her face. She does not want him to see the white and red flushes hotly coming and going.

"Because a better one is due me," he persists, his earnestness strengthened by her refusal. "Surely, a man, when he lays his heart, and hand, and fortune at a lady's feet, deserves a better reason for his refusal than 'because.'"

Her cheek dimples archly a moment, but she brightens as she says, almost inaudibly:

"Well, then, it is because you do not love me."

"Lulu, silly child, why should I ask you to be my wife then? I do love you—as love goes nowadays—fondly and truly."

"Ah! that is it," she cries, bitterly, "as love goes nowadays—and I do not want such love—my heart, where it loves, resigns its whole ardent being, and it will not take less in return."

"And have I offered you less?"—reproachfully this.

She nods in silence.

"Lulu, dear, unreasonable child that you are—why do you think that I do not love you? Be candid with me and let us understand one another. I will not be offended at anything you say to me."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing! If you can show just cause why and wherefore such a thing as my not loving you can be, I surely cannot be offended."

"I know you love me a little," she returns, trying hard to speak lightly and calmly, "but I also know, dear Bruce, that your heart, it may be unconsciously to yourself, still retains too much of its old feeling for one I need not name, for you to love me as I should like to be loved. Understand that I am not blaming you for this, but you know in your heart, Bruce, that were she free, and would she listen to your suit, you would not look twice at poor me."

Another home-thrust! He stands fire like a soldier, rallies, and meets her with another shot.

"This from you, Lulu! I did not think it in you to twit me with loving another man's wife!"

"I did not mean it that way," she answers, flushed and imploringly. "I meant—only meant to show you, Bruce, that I could not—oh! that I cared too much for you to be happy with you unless your love was strong and deep as mine."

"I did not think you could be so jealous and exacting, child."

"I am not jealous nor exacting. I am only true to my woman's nature," she answers, sweetly and firmly.

"Nonsense!" he answers, brusquely, "let all that pass—I do love you, Brownie, not as I loved her, I own it. But you are so sweet and lovable that it will be easy for you to fill up my heart, to the exclusion of all other past love. Try it and see, dear. Promise me that you will give yourself to me."

"I cannot."

"Is that final?"

"Final!" she gasped, as white as her dress, and leaning unwillingly against his shoulder.

"Why, Brownie, child, dearest, look up—heavens! she is fainting," cried Bruce, and taking her in his arms, he ran into a little pavilion near by, and laying her down on the low, rustic bench within, opened the gold-stoppered bottle of salts that swung by a golden chain to her belt, and applied it to her nostrils.

She struggled up to a sitting posture and drew a long breath, while tears rolled over her cheeks. Both lily white hands were uplifted to prevent another application of the pungent salts.

"Don't please," she said, "you are taking away all the breath I have left."

"You deserve some such punishment for your cruelty to me," he retorts, in a very good humor with himself and her, for he feels he has done his duty in his second love affair, and if she will not marry him, why that is her own affair, and he cheerfully swallows his chagrin, and also a spice of genuine regret as he smiles down at her.

"I am going back, if you please." She steps out of the pavilion while speaking, and he attends her. As they walk silently on he gathers a flower here and there, the rarest that blow in the garden, and putting them together they grow into a graceful bouquet before they reach the house. Then he presents it with the kindest of smiles and quite ignoring the unkind cut she has given his vanity.

She takes it, thanks him, and notes with quick eyes that no roses, no white ones at least, nor pansies are there—those flowers are sacred to memory, or, perchance, remorse.

"We may be friends at least?" he queries, trying to look into the eyes that meet his unwillingly. And "always, I hope," she answers, as they reach the piazza steps.

Mrs. Winans is at the piano singing for her hostess. A dumb agony settles down on Lulu's racked heart as the rich, sweetly trained voice floats out to them as they ascend the steps, blending its music with the deep melancholy notes of old ocean in the plaintive words of an old song that is a favorite of Mrs. Conway's:

"Let us take that for an augury, little one," he says, cheerfully; "'we may be happy yet.'"