ughts. In the foreground, hiding all else,
there was the glow of his presence, the light and shadow of his face,
the way his short-sighted eyes, at her approach, widened and deepened
as if to draw her down into them; and, above all, the flush of youth and
tenderness in which his words enclosed her.

Now she saw him detached from her, drawn back into the unknown, and
whispering to another girl things that provoked the same smile of
mischievous complicity he had so often called to her own lips. The
feeling possessing her was not one of jealousy: she was too sure of
his love. It was rather a terror of the unknown, of all the mysterious
attractions that must even now be dragging him away from her, and of her
own powerlessness to contend with them.

She had given him all she had--but what was it compared to the other
gifts life held for him? She understood now the case of girls like
herself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, but
their all was not enough: it could not buy more than a few moments....

The heat had grown suffocating--she felt it descend on her in smothering
waves, and the faces in the crowded hall began to dance like the
pictures flashed on the screen at Nettleton. For an instant Mr. Royall's
countenance detached itself from the general blur. He had resumed his
place in front of the harmonium, and sat close to her, his eyes on her
face; and his look seemed to pierce to the very centre of her confused
sensations.... A feeling of physical sickness rushed over her--and then
deadly apprehension. The light of the fiery hours in the little house
swept back on her in a glare of fear....

She forced herself to look away from her guardian, and became aware that
the oratory of the Hatchard cousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles was
again flapping his wings. Fragments of his peroration floated through
her bewildered brain.... "A rich harvest of hallowed memories.... A
sanctified hour to which, in moments of trial, your thoughts will
prayerfully return.... And now, O Lord, let us humbly and fervently give
thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here in the old home to which we
have come back from so far. Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come,
in all its homely sweetness--in the kindliness and wisdom of its old
people, in the courage and industry of its young men, in the piety and
purity of this group of innocent girls----" He flapped a white wing in
their direction, and at the same moment