t he had to tell Pauline that
afternoon, and she broke down and cried in her disappointment.

FEBRUARY

Pauline had been looking forward to the entrance of February with joyful
remembrance of what last February had brought her; and that the
anniversary of Guy's declaration of his love should be heralded by such
a discomfiture of their plans was a shock. The renewal of his
uncertainty about the fate of the poems destroyed the progress of a love
that seemed to have come back to its old calm course, and brought back
with all the added sharpness of absence the heartache and the
apprehension. Pauline sat in the nursery window-seat and pondered
dolefully the obstacles to happiness from which her mind, however hard
it tried, could not escape. Most insistently of these obstacles Guy's
debts haunted her, harassing and material responsibilities that in great
uncouth battalions swept endlessly past. Even in the middle of the night
she would wake gasping in an effort to escape from being stifled by
their vastness pressing down upon her brain. The small presents Guy had
given her burned through the darkness to reproach her: even the two
rings goaded her for the extravagance they represented. It was useless
for Guy to explain that his debts were a trifle, because the statement
of a sum so large as L200 appalled her as much as if he had said L2,000.
She longed for a confidante whose sympathy she could exact for the
incubus that possessed her lover; and fancying a disloyalty to him if
she discussed his money affairs with her family, she could think of no
one but Miss Verney to whom the burdensome secret might be intrusted.

"William had the same difficulty," sighed the old maid. "Really it seems
as if money _is_ the root of all evil. Two hundred pounds, you say? Oh,
dear, how uncomfortable he must feel, poor young man!"

"If only I could make some money, dear Miss Verney. But how could I?"

"I used to ask myself that very question," said the old maid. "I used to
ask myself just that very identical question. But there was never any
satisfactory answer."

"It seems so dreadful that he should have sold nearly all his books and
still have debts," moaned Pauline. "It seems so cruel. Ought I to give
him up?"

"Give him up?" repeated Miss Verney, her cheeks becoming dead white at
the question. "Oh, my dear, I don't think it could be right for you to
give him up on account of debts. Patience seems to me the only remedy
for your