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“If you are so interested in the game, it is a wonder you didn’t go to see it yourself,” said the Young Man boldly.

“Well, I just couldn’t,” said the Girl with a sigh. “If anybody had ever told me that there would be a football game in Halifax, and that I would elect to prowl about by myself in the park instead of going to it, I’d have laughed them to scorn. Even Beatrix would never have dared to prophesy that. But you see it has happened. I was too crumpled up in my mind to care about football today. I had to come here and have it out with myself. That is why I put on my hat. I thought, perhaps, I might get through with my mental gymnastics in time to go to the game afterwards. But I didn’t. It is just maddening, too. I got this hat and dress on purpose to wear to it. They’re black and yellow, you see–the Dalhousie colours. It was my own idea. I was sure it would make a sensation. But I couldn’t go to the game and take any interest in it, feeling as I do, could I, now?”

The Young Man said, of course, she couldn’t. It was utterly out of the question.

The Girl smiled. Without a smile, she was charming. With a smile, she was adorable.

“I like to have my opinions bolstered up. Do you know, I want to tell you something? May I?”

“You may. I’ll never tell anyone as long as I live,” said the Young Man solemnly.

“I don’t know you and you don’t know me. That is why I want to tell you about it. I must tell somebody, and if I told anybody I knew, they’d tell it all over Halifax. It is dreadful to be talking to you like this. Beatrix would have three fits, one after the other, if she saw me. But Beatrix is a slave to conventionality. I glory in discarding it at times. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all,” said the Young Man sincerely.

The Girl sighed.

“I have reached that point where I must have a confidant, or go crazy. Once I could tell things to Beatrix. That was before she got engaged. Now she tells everything to him. There is no earthly way of preventing her. I’ve tried them all. So, nowadays, when I get into trouble, I tell it out loud to myself in the glass. It’s a relief, you know. But that is no good now. I want to tell it to somebody who can say things back. Will you promise to say things back?”

The Young Man assured her that he would when the proper time came.

“Very well. But please don’t look at me while I’m telling you. I’ll be sure to blush in places. When Beatrix wants to be particularly aggravating she says I have lost the art of blushing. But that is only her way of putting it, you know. Sometimes I blush dreadfully.”

The Young Man dragged his eyes from the face under the black-and-yellow hat, and fastened them on a crooked pine tree that hung out over the bank.

“Well,” began the Girl, “the root of the whole trouble is simply this. There is a young man in England. I always think of him as the Creature. He is the son of a man who was Father’s especial crony in boyhood, before Father emigrated to Canada. Worse than that, he comes of a family which has contracted a vile habit of marrying into our family. It has come down through the ages so long that it has become chronic. Father left most of his musty traditions in England, but he brought this pet one with him. He and this friend agreed that the latter’s son should marry one of Father’s daughters. It ought to have been Beatrix–she is the oldest. But Beatrix had a pug nose. So Father settled on me. From my earliest recollection I have been given to understand that just as soon as I grew up there would be a ready-made husband imported from England for me. I was doomed to it from my cradle. Now,” said the Girl, with a tragic gesture, “I ask you, could anything be more hopelessly, appallingly stupid and devoid of romance than that?”