dark figure, thought it had, even in this dimness, an
unfamiliar look. It paused close by the gate.

"Winifred!"

Will did not know the voice; the tone turned him blind and dizzy.

Winifred started violently, and turned; she clasped her hands tightly,
and lifted them to her breast in a frightened way, as she fell back a
step.

"Oh, my God!" she cried, under her breath. There was a rattle of the
gate-latch, a sharp flying open of the gate, and the stranger held her
in his arms.

"My darling, my darling!" he said, with an infinite tenderness. "Did
you think you could hide anywhere in all this wide world where I
should not find you?"

For just an instant she yielded to his clasp--then she drew back. "You
must not," she said, softly, with unmistakable pain in her voice. "You
know that. I thought if I was utterly out of sight or hearing, you
would forget me, and _I_ might--forget myself."

He broke in before she had fairly spoken. "You were mistaken,
Winifred; there was no one between us. O my foolish little hot-head!
if you had not been so headlong in your self-sacrifice--if you had
only waited till I came back--I could have showed you in ten minutes
that there was no place for it. Mollie is married to John Gates and is
very happy. And you and I--my little girl, how nearly our two lives
have been spoiled! Sweetheart," he said, laughing with a shaky voice,
"I think I shall never dare let go of you again"--and he drew her back
to him.

She hesitated--surrendered--clung to him with a long sobbing breath.
"Oh, I have wanted you so, I have _wanted_ you so!" she cried. "Oh,
don't be a dream and melt away this time!"

Will Strong, standing close in the darkness of the oleander, acquiring
a life-long association with smell of Madeira vine and oleander and
wet earth, cry of crickets and noise of sprinkling water, gathered
himself together enough to creep away. He was _going_ to realize it
pretty soon, he thought; he did not yet; it seemed likely to be beyond
endurance when he did. As he passed the door some one opened it, and
the lamp-light streamed about him; Winifred looked around and saw his
face for an instant, and then he had slipped away through a side gate.

He walked out from town across miles of dark plain, until he came to
the empty channel of the stream by which they had sat in March.
Underfoot not a blade of grass or green thing; no stranger would have
believed that living thing had ever grown there. The fl