ch we put on with years, with experience, and with the
knowledge of life had for the moment fallen from her, leaving merely the
simple soul of childhood gazing in its eternal wonder at the stars. A
wave of tenderness lifted Orde from his feet. He leaned over, his breath
coming quickly.

"Carroll!" he said.

She looked up at him, and shrank back.

"No, no! You mustn't," she cried. She did not pretend to misunderstand.
The preliminaries seemed in some mysterious fashion to have been said
long ago.

"It's life or death with me," he said.

"I must not," she cried, fluttering like a bird. "I promised myself long
ago that I must always, ALWAYS take care of mother."

"Please, please, dear," pleaded Orde. He had nothing more to say than
this, just the simple incoherent symbols of pleading; but in such crises
it is rather the soul than the tongue that speaks. His hand met hers and
closed about it. It did not respond to his grasp, nor did it draw away,
but lay limp and warm and helpless in his own.

She shook her head slowly.

"Don't you care for me, dear?" asked Orde very gently.

"I have no right to tell you that," answered she. "I have tried, oh, so
hard, to keep you from saying this, for I knew I had no right to hear
you."

Orde's heart leaped with a wild exultation.

"You do care for me!" he cried.

They had mounted the steps and stood just within the vestibule. Orde
drew her toward him, but she repulsed him gently.

"No," she shook her head. "Please be very good to me. I'm very weak."

"Carroll!" cried Orde. "Tell me that you love me! Tell me that you'll
marry me!"

"It would kill mother if I should leave her," she said sadly.

"But you must marry me," pleaded Orde. "We are made for each other. God
meant us for each other."

"It would have to be after a great many years," she said doubtfully.

She pulled the bell, which jangled faintly in the depths of the house.

"Good-night," she said. "Come to me to-morrow. No, you must not come
in." She cut short Orde's insistence and the eloquence that had just
found its life by slipping inside the half-open door and closing it
after her.

Orde stood for a moment uncertain; then turned away and walked up the
street, his eyes so blinded by the greater glory that he all but ran
down an inoffensive passer-by.

At the hotel he wrote a long letter to his mother. The first part was
full of the exultation of his discovery. He told of his good fortune
quite as somet