be faced.

"There is a more serious barrier than that between us," she reminded
him gravely.

"Hetty!" he said stupidly. "But I TOLD you--"

But he stopped short, realizing that he had not yet told her, and
rather at a loss.

"You didn't tell me anything," she said, eyeing him steadily.

"Why," Barry's tone was much lower, "I meant to tell you first of all,
but--you know what a day I have had! It seems impossible that I only
left San Francisco this morning."

He brought his chair from his own desk, and sat opposite her, and,
while the summer twilight outside deepened into dusk, unmindful of
time, he went over the pitiful little story. Sidney listened, her
serious eyes never leaving his face, her fine hands locked idly before
her. The telephone boy and the movers had gone now, and there was
silence all about.

"You have suffered enough, Barry; thank God it is all over!" she said,
at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare
revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface of
her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His
care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces. Barry
abruptly broke the silence.

"For one year, Sidney," he said, in a purposeful, steady voice that was
new to her, and that brought her eyes, almost startled, to his face,
"for one year I'm going to show you what I can do. In that time the
Mail will be where it was before the fire, if all goes well. And then--"

"Then--" she said, a little unsteadily, rising and gathering hat and
gloves together, "then you shall come to me and tell me anything you
like! But--but not now! All this is so new and so strange--"

"Ah, but Sidney!" he pleaded, taking her hands again, "mayn't I speak
of it just this one day, and then never again? Let me think for this
whole year that PERHAPS you will marry a country editor, and that we
shall spend the rest of our lives together, writing and planning, and
tramping through the woods, and picnicking with the kiddies on the
river, and giving Christmas parties for every little rag-tag and
bob-tail in Old Paloma!"

"But you don't want to settle down in this stupid village," she laughed
tremulously, tears on her lashes, "at the ugly old Hall, and among
these superficial empty-headed women?"

"Just here," he said, smiling at his own words, "in the sweetest place
in the world, among the best neighbors! I never want to go anywhere
else. Our friends a