ce for her, although the scales had fallen from
his eyes, owing to two causes. But an instinct of prudence and a great
deal of cynicism born of experience rose up to restrain him. He had
gone through this sort of thing before. He had seen women utterly
miserable and heart-broken seemingly, on his account, as they said,
meaning it, too, at the time; but six months or a year thence had found
them laughing in his face, if not playing the same game with somebody
else; but he himself had not taken them seriously, wherefore it didn't
matter. Yet it was all part of an education, and of what use was an
education save to be applied?

"Don't cry like that, little one," he said gently. "Why should we say
hard things to each other, you and I? We never used to."

The gentle tone melted her at once. She dropped her hands. All the
hardness had gone out of her face, and the sea-blue eyes were limpid and
tender and winning.

"No, we used not. I have become very bad-tempered--very quarrelsome.
But--oh, Colvin, I am so tired of life--of life here. It gets upon my
nerves, I think. And I have hardly any friends, and you--you the
greatest of them all, hardly seem to care for me--for us--now. I--we--
never see you in these days, and--I feel it somehow."

Colvin's heart smote him. He need not have stayed away so long and so
markedly, but there was a reason, and he had acted with the best
intentions. Wherein he had blundered, as people invariably do when they
suffer their actions to be guided by such tissue-paper motives, instead
of by the hard and safe rule of judiciousness, expediency, and knowledge
of human nature.

"Poor little girl! You must not run away with all those ideas," he
said. "And, you are flattering me. Well, I will come over again soon,
and have a talk, but I must go now. There, will that do?"

He was talking to her quite gently, quite soothingly, just as he used to
do, and the effect was wonderful. All the dejection, the sullenness,
disappeared from her face, dispelled by a bright, almost happy smile.

"Good-bye, then," she said. "I don't think I'll come and see you start
this time. Good-bye, dear."

Her eyes shone soft and dewy in the upturned face. Her lips were raised
invitingly. It was not in mortal man to refuse them, however stern
rectitude under the circumstances might dictate such a course. This one
did not refuse them.

"Good-bye, my darling!" she breathed into his ear, in a voice so