"I could tell you not to come," she said. "I wonder if I ought to."
"Why do you wonder if you 'ought to?'"
"Don't you guess?"
"No."
"Then let's both be mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go at that, shall we?"
"Very well; so long as it's certain that you don't tell me not to come again."
"I'll not tell you that—yet," she said. "In fact———" She paused, reflecting, with her head to one side. "In fact, I won't tell you not to come, probably, until I see that's what you want me to tell you. I'll let you out easily—and I'll be sure to see it. Even before you do, perhaps."
"That arrangement suits me," Russell returned, and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had become serious. "It suits me better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come—oh, not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!—but if you mean that I can see you pretty often."
"Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "But before I say you can come 'pretty often,' I'd like to know
