ine to you about my sordid
grievances."

"Kenrick, don't," she said, impulsively putting forth her hand to rest
on mine. "`Whine,' indeed! That isn't you anyway. Why, I am proud of
your confidence, and sorry--oh, so sorry--for its cause. But you must
cheer up. I have an instinct that everything will come right. It
sometimes does, you know."

Would it? I thought I knew better, but I had done enough grizzling
already, so was not going to say so. And I thought with a certain
bitterness that her sympathy, sweet as it was, was not of the nature I
could have wished it to be. Even then the concern in her tone, the
softening of her eyes, the touch of her hand as she stood facing me,
scattered my resolution to the winds. She should know all, then and
there--all--all.

"So you think that everything will come right, do you?" I said,
pretending to do something with the spade so as not to be obliged to
look at her.

"Yes. I have an instinct that way."

"But if it can't?"

"That is an `if' in which my belief is somewhat feeble," she answered
confidently.

"Supposing I--er, supposing a man had lost all he had in the world, and
that beyond all possibility of recovery--what then?"

"He might remedy the loss. Energy, some resourcefulness, and a great
deal of common sense, constitute not a bad foundation for a fresh
start--say in a country like this."

The cool, practical, matter-of-fact tone of this reply fairly startled
me--and then--Great Scott! the remarks that Pentridge had let fall
during our conversation a day or two back, gratifying to myself in that
they reflected the estimation in which I seemed to be held, flashed
across my mind. Beryl's words were spoken with a purpose--were meant to
be taken home, and with the idea came another. Could I, without
anything definite passing between us, turn the key of her mind as
regarded herself?

"Yes, he might remedy the loss--after a time," I said, still pretending
to work with the spade--still not looking at her. "After a time. But
what if that time were too late?"

"Could it ever be?"

"Why, yes. Because by that time what would have made success worth
striving for might be no longer attainable; might have passed out of
reach irrevocably and for ever."

She did not answer. In the tensity of the silence the clink of my spade
in the dry dusty furrow seemed to my wrought-up mind to sound as with a
loud hammering. A network of sunlight, from the deep blue