her hands in his and bent over her.

Just for a moment was Peg tempted to yield to the embrace.

Had she done so, the two lives would have changed in that moment. But
the old rebellious spirit came uppermost, and she looked at him
defiantly and cried:

"Are you goin' to propose to me, too?"

That was the one mistake that separated those two hearts. Sir Gerald
drew back from her--hurt.

She was right--they were not equals.

She could not understand him, since he could never quite say all he
felt, and she could never divine what was left unsaid.

She was indeed right.

Such as this could never be a home for her.

Jarvis came quietly in:

"Mr. Hawkes says, Miss, if you are going to catch the train--"

"I'll catch it," said Peg impatiently; and Jarvis went out.

Peg looked at Jerry's back turned eloquently toward her, as though in
rebuke.

"Why in the wurrld did I say that to him?" she muttered. "It's me Irish
tongue." She went to the door, and opened it noisily, rattling the
handle loudly--hoping he would look around.

But he never moved.

She accepted the attitude as one of dismissal.

Under her breath she murmured:

"Good-bye, Misther Jerry--an' God bless ye--an' thank ye for bein' so
nice to me." And she passed out.

In the hall Peg found Ethel and Hawkes waiting for her.

They put her between them in the cab and with "Michael" in her arms,
she drove through the gates of Regal Villa never to return.

The gathering storm broke as she reached the station. In storm Jerry
came into her life, in storm she was leaving his.

The threads of what might have been a fitting addition to the "LOVE
STORIES OF THE WORLD" were broken.

Could the break ever be healed?

CHAPTER XVIII

PEG'S FAREWELL TO ENGLAND

Many and conflicting were Peg's feelings as she went aboard the ship
that was to carry her from England forever.

In that short MONTH she had experienced more contrasted feelings than
in all the other YEARS she had lived.

It seemed as if she had left her girlhood, with all its keen hardships
and sweet memories, behind her.

When the vessel swung around the dock in Liverpool and faced toward
America Peg felt that not only was she going back to the New World, but
she was about to begin a new existence. Nothing would ever be quite the
same again. She had gone through the leavening process of emotional
life and had come out of it with her courage still intact, her honesty
unimpaired, but