I've haunted you all day, and I
have----"

"All that has nothing to do with it," she said, slowly. "Just after you
left, this afternoon, I found that I could not stay here. My people are
going abroad, to Dresden, at once, and I must go with them. That's what
almost made me cry. I leave to-morrow morning."

He felt something strike at his heart. In the sudden sense of dearth
he had no astonishment that she should betray such agitation over
her departure from a place she had known so little, and friends who
certainly were not part of her life. He rose to his feet, and, resting
his arm against a sycamore, stood staring away from her at nothing.

She did not move. There was a long silence.

He had wakened suddenly; the skies had been sapphire, the sward emerald,
Plattville a Camelot of romance; to be there, enchantment--and now, like
a meteor burned out in a breath, the necromancy fell away and he gazed
into desolate years. The thought of the Square, his dusty office, the
bleak length of Main Street, as they should appear to-morrow, gave him
a faint physical sickness. To-day it had all been touched to beauty; he
had felt fit to live and work there a thousand years--a fool's dream,
and the waking was to emptiness. He should die now of hunger and thirst
in that Sahara; he hoped the Fates would let it be soon--but he knew
they would not; knew that this was hysteria, that in his endurance he
should plod on, plod, plod dustily on, through dingy, lonely years.

There was a rumble of thunder far out on the western prairie. A cold
breath stole through the hot stillness, and an arm of vapor reached out
between the moon and the quiet earth. Darkness fell. The man and the
girl kept silence between them. They might have been two sad guardians
of the black little stream that splashed unseen at their feet. Now and
then an echo of far away lightning faintly illumined them with a green
light. Thunder rolled nearer, ominously; the gods were driving their
chariots over the bridge. The chill breath passed, leaving the air again
to its hot inertia.

"I did not want to go," she said, at last, with tears just below the
surface of her voice. "I wanted to stay here, but he--they wouldn't--I
can't."

"Wanted to stay here?" he said, huskily, not turning. "Here?"

"Yes."

"In Rouen, you mean?"

"In Plattville."

"In Plattville?" He turned now, astounded.

"Yes; wouldn't you have taken me on the 'Herald'?" She rose and came
toward him