d
softly.

She shrugged and smiled.

It was a rare moment. I did not mean to spoil it. I ought to have been
content. My eagerness was at fault.

"Oh!" I burst out crudely, "if you knew how sorry I am to have done
anything to _you_, of all people, that displeased. If----" She recoiled;
she drew back. I had ventured where angels feared to tread. The chain
was not yet untangled, but she would not let me kneel there any longer.
She rose; I too.

"My time is limited, as I said," she reminded me; "I am here on
business. Let us endeavor to complete it, Miss Vars."

"Yes," I said, blushing scarlet, "let us, by all means. I'm sorry,
excuse me, I'll go upstairs and see what else we have."

* * * * *

When Bob finally called at Van de Vere's I hadn't seen him for over a
year. While I had been working so hard to establish myself in my new
venture, Bob had been starting a brand-new law firm of his own, in a
little town I had never heard of in the Middle West. He had severed all
connections with the University when his mother had died. I knew as well
as if he had told me that when he broke loose from any sort of steady
salary he had abandoned all hope of persuading me to come and grow in
his green-house, as he had once put it. It had been our original plan
that Bob would work gradually into a law firm in Boston, at the same
time retaining some small salaried position at the University enabling
us to be married before he became established as a lawyer. Bob had been
able to lay little by. His mother had required specialists and trained
nurses. When I first realized that Bob had gone West and set about
planning his life without reference to me I felt peculiarly free and
unhampered. When he as much as told me that it was easier for him not to
hear from me at all, than in the impersonal way I insisted upon, I was
glad. I cared for Bob too much not to feel a little pang in my breast
every time I saw my name and address written by his hand. And I wanted
nothing to swerve me away from the goal I had my eyes set on--the goal
of an acknowledged success as an independent, self-supporting human
being.

When Bob first dropped in at Van de Vere's I hardly recognized him as
the romantic figure who had wandered over brown hillsides with me, a
volume of poetry stuffed into his overcoat pocket. No one would have
guessed from this man's enthusiastic interest in the progressive spirit
of the West that he had been born on Beaco