ere now a builder). You did
the straight thing in the end."

"What?" asked Harry, a little startled.

"Well, some did say as you'd known it all along. Oh, I don't say so;
some did."

Harry began to laugh. "It doesn't matter, does it, if I did the straight
thing in the end?"

"I'm sure as I shouldn't blame you if you had been a bit tempted. I know
what that is! Well, sir, I'll say good-evening."

"Good-evening, miss, and thank you very much," said Harry, rising as she
rose. His manner had its old touch of lordliness. His friends criticised
that sometimes; this young lady evidently approved.

"You've no cause to thank me," said she, with an admiring look.

"Yes, I have. As it happened, I believe I wanted somebody to remind me
that I had done the straight thing in the end, and I'm much obliged to
you for doing it."

"Well, I shall have something to tell the girls!" she said again in
wondering tones, as she nodded to him and turned slowly away.

Harry was comforted. The stress of his pain was past. He sat on over his
simple meal in a leisurely comfortable fashion. He was happy in the fact
that his enemy had at least nothing with which she could reproach him,
that he had no reason for not holding his head erect before her. And the
girl's philosophy had been good. He had a job, and that was the great
thing in this world. He felt confident that the struggle was won now,
and that it would never have to be fought again in so severe a fashion.
His self-respect was intact; if he had been beaten, he would never have
forgiven himself.

He regained his rooms. A letter lay waiting for him on the table. He
opened it and found that it was from Mina Zabriska.

"We are back here," she wrote. "I am staying at Blent till my uncle
comes down. I must write and say good-by to you. I dare say we
shall never meet again, or merely by chance. I am very unhappy
about it all, but with two people like Cecily and you nothing else
could have happened. I see that now, and I'm not going to try to
interfere any more. I shan't ask you to forgive me for interfering,
because you've made the result quite enough punishment for anything
I did wrong. And now Cecily goes about looking just like you--hard
and proud and grim; and she's begun to move things about and alter
arrangements at Blent. That's what brings it home to me most of
all. ('And to me,' interposed Harry as he read.) If I was the so