and she had not a
word for him, and yet he was leaving her deliberately to another at the
call of duty. Her heart was in a tumult of grief and self-abasement.
She could only stand and look up at him, her eyes filled with tears,
her lips trembling, and the next moment, Gavin had stooped, with the
sudden boldness of a shy man, and kissed her.

And then the door was flung open and shut again, and he was gone into
the storm and darkness, and Christina was left standing motionless,
gazing at the closed door.

It was a long time before she found courage to return to the
sitting-room. Her heart was throbbing with grief and at the same time
a wild exultation that she could not understand and had no time to
analyze. She did not even attempt to answer Wallace's raillery as to
the length of time she had been away, or John's as to why she had
stayed in the cellar long enough to eat all the apples which she found
she had forgotten to bring. The event had been too stupendous for her
to come down to the commonplace. And at last Wallace grew just a
little piqued over her absent-minded air and went home early very much
to Christina's relief.

It was the week after Gavin had gone out into the storm and Christina
was still going about in a sort of daze, with feelings still
unanalyzed, when she remembered that Friday would be Jimmie's
eighteenth birthday. Jimmie should have been through school, but he
had done that disgraceful thing that, so far, no Lindsay had ever done;
he had failed in his examinations the Summer before. Had it not been
for the boys' going to war, the great event that absorbed the mind of
the family, Jimmie might have fared badly. As it was he received a
solemn warning from John, and went back to school in the Fall very
unwillingly.

"Life is so queer," Christina was constrained to say. "I was always
dying to go to school and couldn't, and Jimmie is dying to stay out of
it and can't."

"It's Allister's money that's spoiled the silly kid," grumbled John.
"That and the war. I tell you, Christina, we always thought it was a
dreadful misfortune to be poor, and wished we had money, but I am
beginning to think that we ought to thank the Lord that we have had to
do without. Jimmie has never done very well at school just because it
has been made easy for him to there."

"I'm afraid Allister's money is not likely to do any of us much more
harm, anyway," Christina said to herself, remembering another rather
de