ad chosen.
It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions
from him and to bid her good-bye.

"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and looking very
much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He
had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman's No," which at the last
moment meant "Yes." And then there was another which chronicled how,
after several stanzas of upbraiding, "we rushed into each other's arms."
Both recurred to him now. He had often thought how true they were.

"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who apparently had an
unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this
once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other
and to our--former attachment."

"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful she
would lose him.

"Good-bye."

"You understand it is for always?"

"I do."

He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she really
let him go?

"I am not the kind of man to be whistled back," he said, fiercely. It
was an appeal and a defiance, for he was just the kind of man, and they
both knew it.

"Of course not."

"That is your last word?"

"My last word."

He dropped her hand and half turned to go.

She made no sign.

Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind him. At
the little gate he stopped a moment, listening intently. No recalling
voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were talking about. With
a trembling hand he slammed the gate and departed.

Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long that
the stooping sun found out the solemn, outstretched arms of the cedar,
and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle's wing. Each little
twig and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold against the twilight that
lurked beneath the heavy boughs.

She sat so still that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, and
struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her,
first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, with the
other, and decided that she was harmless.

Presently a robin dropped down close to her, flashing up his gray under
wing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, and from its
sun-stirred depths said his say.

The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons, when the shadows are
lengthening, he sings sadness into your heart. If you a