if you have a feeling of even ordinary kindness for me.
that you will never mention this subject to me again. You remember how
I promised your father that if he would let me make my home with you,
he should never live to regret it? Do you think that I intend to repay
the dearest wish of his heart in this way? Why, Mr. David, you are
engaged to marry Kate." She took up the water-pail to go.

"Kate's one of the best girls alive, but I feel toward her like a
brother. Besides, Anna, what have you been doing with those big brown
eyes of yours? Don't you see that Kate and Lennox Sanderson are head
over heels in love with each other?"

The pail of water slipped from Anna's hand and sent a flood over
David's boots.

"No, no--anything but that! You don't know what you are saying!"

Dave looked at her in absolute amazement. He had no chance to reply.
As if in answer to his remark, there came through the outer gate, Kate
and Sanderson arm in arm. They had been gathering golden-rod, and
their arms were full of the glory of autumn.

There was a certain assumption of proprietary right in the way that
Sanderson assisted Kate with the golden-rod that Anna recognized. She
knew it, and falseness of it burned through, her like so much corrosive
acid. She stood with the upturned pail at her feet, unable to recover
her composure, her bosom heaving high, her eyes dilating. She stood
there, wild as a startled panther, uncertain whether to fight or fly.

"You don't know what a good time we've been having," Kate called out.

"You see, Anna dear, I was right," David said to her.

But Anna did not answer. Sorrow had broken her on its wheel. Where
was the justice of it? Why should he go forth to seek his
happiness--and find it--and she cower in shame through all the years to
come?

Dave saw that she had forgotten his presence; she stood there in the
gathering night with wild, unseeing eyes. Memory had turned back the
hands of the clock till it pointed out that fatal hour on another
golden afternoon in autumn, and Sanderson, the hero of the hour, had
come to her with the marks of battle still upon him, and as the crowd
gave away for him, right and left, he had said: "I could not help
winning with your eyes on me."

Oh, the lying dishonor of it! It was not jealousy that prompted her,
for a moment, to go to Kate and tell her all. What right had such
vultures as he to be received, smiled upon, courted, caressed? If
there