amping
down the generous impulse that rose in response to his appeal. And she
went up her road. A few yards and she paused, hoping to hear him
coming after her. A few yards more and she sat down on a big boulder
by the wayside. Until now all the wishes of her life had been more or
less material, had been wishes which her wealth or the position her
wealth gave had enabled her instantly to gratify. She buried her face
in her arms and sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cyclone of
anger, and jealousy, and shame, and love, and despair.

"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched teeth. "I hate him,
but--if he came and wanted me, oh, how I would LOVE him!"

Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's.

"He isn't down yet," said her mother. "You know, he doesn't finish
dressing nowadays until he has read the papers and his mail. Then he
walks in the garden."

"I'll go there," said Pauline. "Won't you bring him when he's ready?"

She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood--how far,
far it seemed!--did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling in
tree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused at the end of the long
arbor and sat on the rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bed
of lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her childhood she used to run
from the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her
glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lower
her head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the
soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this
way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor--the odor of
life. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see,
down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting
slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that
the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, would
unfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells a
perfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring.

As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth of
her life she could see and feel the backward heralds of her
spring--"after the long winter," she said to herself.

She glanced up--her father coming toward her. He was alone, was
holding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her, his
eyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline," he began, "has everything
been--been well--of late