ich would creep into their pity would be hard
to bear. It's hateful to feel that you are being put up with.
Sometimes I thought I'd go back to Canada."

"I've wondered how you stood it as long as you did," George said
incautiously.

"Aren't you forgetting? I had Dick with me then." Sylvia paused and
shuddered. "It would be so different now."

George felt reproved and very compassionate.

"Yes," he said, "I'm afraid I forgot; but the whole thing seems unreal.
It's almost impossible to imagine your living on a farm in western
Canada."

"I dare say it's difficult. I'll confess I'm fond of ease and comfort
and refinement. I like to be looked after and waited on; to have
somebody to keep unpleasant things away. That's dreadfully weak, isn't
it? And because I haven't more courage, I'm sending you back to the
prairie."

"I'm quite ready to go."

"Oh, I'm sure of that! It's comforting to remember that you're so
resolute and matter-of-fact. You wouldn't let troubles daunt
you--perhaps you would scarcely notice them when you had made up your
mind."

The man smiled, rather wistfully. He could feel things keenly, and he
had his romance; but Sylvia resumed:

"I sometimes wonder if you ever felt really badly hurt?"

"Once," he said quietly. "I think I have got over it."

"Ah!" she murmured. "I was afraid you would blame me, but now it seems
that Dick knew you better than I did. When he made you my trustee, he
said that you were too big to bear him malice."

The blood crept into George's face.

"After the first shock had passed, and I could reason calmly, I don't
think I blamed either of you. You had promised me nothing; Dick was a
brilliant man, with a charm everybody felt. By comparison, I was
merely a plodder."

Sylvia mused for a few moments.

"George," she said presently, "I sometimes think you're a little too
diffident. You plodders who go straight on, stopping for nothing,
generally gain your object in the end."

His heart beat faster. It looked as if she meant this for a hint.

"I can't thank you properly," she continued; "though I know that all
you undertake will be thoroughly carried out. I wish I hadn't been
forced to let you go so far away; there is nobody else I can rely on."

He could not tell her that he longed for the right to shelter her
always--it was not very long since the Canadian tragedy--but silence
cost him an effort. At length she touched his arm.

"It's getting la