upon another's rights.
Does your breaking off with Mr. Willits alter the case in any
way?--does it make any difference? Is this sailor boy always to be a
wanderer--never to come home to his people and the woman he loves?"

"He'll never come back to me, Uncle George," she said with a shudder,
dropping her eyes. "I found that out the day we talked together in the
park, just before he left. And he's not coming home. Father got a letter
from one of his agents who had seen him. He was looking very well and
was going up into the mountains--I wrote you about it. I am sorry you
didn't get the letter--but of course he has written you too."

"Suppose I should tell you that he would come back if he thought you
would be glad to see him--glad in the old way?"

Kate shook her head: "He would never come. He hates me, and I don't
blame him. I hate myself when I think of it all."

"But if he should walk in now?"--he was very much afraid he would, and
he was not quite ready for him yet. What he was trying to find out
was not whether Kate would be glad to see Harry as a relief to her
loneliness, but whether she really LOVED him.

Some tone in his voice caught her ear. She turned her head quickly
and looked at him with wondering gaze, as if she would read his inmost
thoughts.

"You mean that he is coming, Uncle George--that Harry IS coming home!"
she exclaimed excitedly, the color ebbing from her cheeks.

"He is already here, Kate. He slept upstairs in his old room last night.
I expect him in any minute."

"Here!--in this room!" She was on her feet in an instant, her face
deathly pale, her whole frame shaking. Which way should she turn to
escape? To meet him face to face would bring only excruciating pain.
"Oh, why didn't you tell me, Uncle George!" she burst out. "I won't
see him! I can't!--not now--not here! Let me go home--let me think!
No--don't stop me!" and catching up her cape and parasol she was out the
door and down the steps before he could call her back or even realize
that she had gone.

Once on the pavement she looked nervously up and down the street,
gathered her pretty skirts tight in her hand and with the fluttered
flight of a scared bird darted across the park, dashed through her
swinging gate, and so on up to her bedroom.

There she buried her face in Mammy Henny's lap and burst into an agony
of tears.

While all this had been going on upstairs another equally important
conference was taking place in Pawso