-he does not argue within himself, "Is this my haven?"
he simply puts into it, and lets himself be drifted ashore.

It took but a few minutes more to explain further what Mr. Roy wanted--a
home for his two "poor little fellows."

"They are so young still--and they have lost their mother. They would do
very well in their classes here, if some kind woman would take them and
look after them. I felt, if the Miss Williams I heard of were really the
Miss Williams I used to know, I could trust them to her, more than to any
woman I ever knew."

"Thank you." And then she explained that she had already two girls in
charge. She could say nothing till she had consulted them. In the mean
time--

Just then the bell sounded. The world was going on just as usual--this
strange, commonplace, busy, regardless world!

"I beg your pardon for intruding on your time so long," said Mr. Roy,
rising. "I will leave you to consider the question, and you will let me
know as soon as you can. I am staying at the hotel here, and shall
remain until I can leave my boys settled. Good evening."

Again she felt the grasp of the hand: that ghostly touch, so vivid in
dreams for these years, and now a warm living reality. It was too much.
She could not bear it.

"If you would care to stay," she said--and though it was too dark to see
her, he must have heard the faint tremble in her voice--"our tea is
ready. Let me introduce you to my girls, and they can make friends with
your little boys."

The matter was soon settled, and the little party ushered into the
bright warm parlor, glittering with all the appendages of that pleasant
meal--essentially feminine--a "hungry" tea. Robert Roy put his hand over
his eyes as if the light dazzled him, and then sat down in the arm-chair
which Miss Williams brought forward, turning as he did so to look up at
her--right in her face--with his grave, soft, earnest eyes.

"Thank you. How like that was to your old ways! How very little you are
changed!"

This was the only reference he made, in the slightest degree, to former
times.

And she?

She went out of the room, ostensibly to get a pot of guava jelly for the
boys--found it after some search, and then sat down.

Only in her store closet, with her house-keeping things all about her.
But it was a quiet place, and the door was shut.

There is, in one of those infinitely pathetic Old Testament stories, a
sentence--"And he sought where to weep: and h