g her two hands close to her breast. Her hat tilted back as he
stooped to kiss her, but she did not appear to resent that
disarrangement.

"I have missed you terribly," he said and the glow in her pupils
heightened in brightness.

Marcia was content. After all, her dream was coming true. Here in this
old room of an old house, where other generations had made courtly love,
he would tell her that resolution had come to his heart, driving out
weak vacillation, and resolution spelt her name. It was worth having
been lonely for. Here were just the two of them in the light of a fire
on a hearth--emblem of home.

On their two faces, close together, the blaze threw warm little dashes
of its own color. Into the heart of Marcia Terroll stole belief once
more, and the cheer of the glowing coals.

CHAPTER XXVII

For a while they were content to remain silent; and afterward the man
said, "I've been needing you, Marcia."

The fingers that he held tightened a little on his own. Now she thought
he would tell her that he had given his problem the test of bold
reflection and could come to her with his mind made up--and the decision
was that he needed her. In the hope her loneliness saw an opening vista
of happiness, but his next words were not of that.

"You have read the papers?" he questioned. "You know what has happened?"

Of course she knew and her heart had been full of grief for him in these
days of distress. Had she not written him--and torn up unmailed--a score
of letters in which she had told him tenderly and unreservedly all she
felt? But when she had seen him tonight she had forgotten that,
remembering only that he had searched for her and found her and come to
her.

Now that he spoke of misfortune to himself and his family she wanted to
give him only sympathy and comfort and love--yet coming like a sudden,
chilling draught, a conviction struck in upon her heart and left it
shuddering--with all its tender new hopes shattered.

For as he spoke she realized with the finality of revelation that the
Paul Burton of whom she thought in her dreams had not come at all; only
the Paul Burton who, too weak to bear his own sorrows, came to share
them with her. He had not come offering her strength and companionship
in loneliness--but asking them for himself. He had not come to offer
marriage. She had, in the face of the old warnings, dreamed
again--falsely idealized once more--and his mission was to waken in her
anew