m not half good
enough for you, but--I love you--love you--"

His voice broke on the words. It surely was a very far from confident
suitor who pleaded his case in such phrases as these. He did not so much
as take her hand, only waited there, a little behind her, his head bent
so that he might see as much as he could of the face turned away from
him.

She did not answer; something seemed to hold her from speech. One of her
arms was twined about the rough, untrimmed pillar of the porch; her
clasp tightened until she held it as if it were a bulwark against the
human approach ready to take her from it at a word from her lips.

"I told you in my letter all I knew I couldn't say now. You know what
you mean to me. I'm going to make all I can out of what there is in me
whether you help me or not. But--if I could do it for you--"

Still she could not speak. She clung to the pillar, her breath
quickening. He was silent until he could withstand no longer, then he
spoke so urgently in her ear that he broke in upon that queer, choking
reserve of hers which had kept her from yielding to him:

"Roberta--I _must_ know--I can't bear it."

She turned, then, and put out her hand. He grasped it in both his own.

"What does that mean, dear? May I--may I have the rest of you?"

It was only a tiny nod she gave, this strange girl, Roberta, who had
been so afraid of love, and was so afraid of it yet. And as if he
understood and appreciated her fear, he was very gentle with her. His
arms came about her as they might have come about a frightened child,
and drew her away from the pillar with a tender insistence which all at
once produced an extraordinary effect. When she found that she was not
to be seized with that devastating grasp of possession which she had
dreaded, she was suddenly moved to desire it. His humbleness touched and
melted her--his humbleness, in him who had been at first so
arrogant--and with the first exquisite rush of response she was taken
out of herself. She gave herself to his embrace as one who welcomes it,
and let him have his way--all his way--a way in which he quite forgot to
be gentle at all.

When this had happened, Roberta remembered, entirely too late, that it
was this which, whatever else she gave him, she had meant to refuse
him--at least until to-morrow. Because to-day was undeniably the
twenty-fourth of June--Midsummer's Day!

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PILLARS OF HOME

"Listen, grandfather--they're