s
came the Saint X News-Bulletin with a broad hint that the engagement
was about to be announced.

"It's ridiculously false," said Pauline to herself; but she tossed for
hours each night, trying to soothe the sick pain in her heart. And
while she scouted the possibility of losing him, she was for the first
time entertaining it--a cloud in the great horizon of her faith in the
future; a small cloud, but black and bold against the blue. And she
had no suspicion that he had returned from Chicago deliberately to
raise that cloud.

A few days later another letter from Jennie, full of gossip about Jack
and Caroline, a News-Bulletin with a long article about Caroline,
ending with an even broader hint of her approaching marriage--and
Dumont sent Pauline a note from the hotel in Villeneuve, five miles
from Battle Field: "I must see you. Do not deny me. It means
everything to both of us--what I want to say to you." And he asked her
to meet him in the little park in Battle Field on the bank of the river
where no one but the factory hands and their families ever went, and
they only in the evenings. The hour he fixed was ten the next morning,
and she "cut" ancient history and was there. As he advanced to meet
her she thought she had never before appreciated how handsome he was,
how distinguished-looking--perfectly her ideal of what a man should be,
especially in that important, and at Battle Field neglected, matter,
dress.

She was without practice in indirection, but she successfully hid her
jealousy and her fears, though his manner was making their taunts and
threats desperately real. He seemed depressed and gloomy; he would not
look at her; he shook hands with her almost coldly, though they had not
seen each other for weeks, had not talked together for months. She
felt faint, and her thoughts were like flocks of circling, croaking
crows.

"Polly," he began, when they were in the secluded corner of the park,
"father wants me to get married. He's in a rage at your father for
treating me so harshly. He wants me to marry a girl who's visiting us.
He's always at me about it, making all sorts of promises and threats.
Her father's in the same business that we are, and----"

He glanced at her to note the effect of his words. She had drawn her
tall figure to its full height, and her cheeks were flushed and her
eyes curiously bright. He had stabbed straight and deep into the heart
of her weakness, but also into the hea