nd got away.

Young Arthur Benham, who had been sitting almost silent during the
interview, followed him out of the room and closed the door behind them.
For the first time Ste. Marie noted that the boy's face was white and
strained. He pulled a crumpled square of folded paper from his pocket
and shook it at the other man. "Do you know what this is?" he cried. "Do
you know what's in this?"

Ste. Marie shook his head, but a sudden recollection came to him.

"Ah," said he, "that must be the note Mlle. O'Hara spoke of! She asked
me to tell you that she meant it--whatever it may be--quite seriously;
that it was final. She didn't explain. She just said that--that you were
to take it as final."

The lad gave a sudden very bitter sob. "She has thrown me over!" he
said. "She says I'm not to come back to her."

Ste. Marie gave a wordless cry, and he began to tremble.

"You can read it if you want to," the boy said. "Perhaps you can explain
it. I can't. Do you want to read it?"

The elder man stood staring at him whitely, and the boy repeated his
words.

He said, "You can read it if you want to," and at last Ste. Marie took
the paper between stiff hands, and held it to the light.

Coira O'Hara said, briefly, that too much was against their marriage.
She mentioned his age, the certain hostility of his family, their
different tastes, a number of other things. But in the end she said she
had begun to realize that she did not love him as she ought to do if
they were to marry. And so, the note said, finally, she gave him up to
his family, she released him altogether, and she begged him not to come
back to her, or to urge her to change her mind. Also she made the trite
but very sensible observation that he would be glad of his freedom
before the year was out.

Ste. Marie's unsteady fingers opened and the crumpled paper slipped
through them to the floor. Over it the man and the boy looked at each
other in silence. Young Arthur Benham's face was white, and it was
strained and contorted with its first grief. But first griefs do not
last very long. Coira O'Hara had told the truth--before the year was out
the lad would be glad of his freedom. But the man's face was white also,
white and still, and his eyes held a strange expression which the boy
could not understand and at which he wondered. The man was trembling a
little from head to foot. The boy wondered about that, too, but abruptly
he cried out: "What's up? Where are you go