e sad summer twilights. But with Justin--oh, the
limitless possibilities!

With him each day would bring its wealth of vivid experience--there
would be always the glory of his strength, the uplift of his radiant
youth!

She put the vision from her. So had her father striven for joy, and he
had missed all the great meanings of life--and she would not be like her
father.

The wind was rising, and wailed fretfully above the waters. The stars
were blotted out.

Bettina shivered. What a dark world it was!

She rose and went down-stairs. Again she sat down to her desk. But this
time she wrote rapidly, and the letter that she wrote was not to
Anthony!

When she had sealed and stamped it, she crept down the shadowy stairway,
thence to the narrow street.

The mail box was at the corner, and she sped toward it; as she came back
on flying feet, a whisper reached her from the darkness of the garden--a
whisper which made her heart stand still.

"Betty----"

"_Justin_----"

He emerged from the shadows. "I didn't dare to hope I should see you. I
ran away from the yacht club dance--and I'm due back there now. But I
wanted you. I think I must have wished so hard that I wished you here.
I wouldn't ring for fear I should wake poor Miss Matthews."

His eager whisper met no like response. "You shouldn't have come," she
said, dully.

He bent down to look at her. Under the light from the street lamp he
could see the disorder of her fair hair, the frightened look in her
eyes.

"Dear one--what is it?"

"You mustn't call me that. Did you get my letter?"

"Yes. That's why I came--I knew that by this time you would have written
to Anthony--that you were--free----"

"But I haven't written to Anthony."

"You haven't? Wasn't that the letter you just mailed?"

"No--I was mailing a letter to you----"

A sudden fear clutched him. "What did you have to say to me?"

"That--oh, Justin, I can't give Anthony up----"

"Why not?"

"Oh----We can't talk here. Come up-stairs quietly--we mustn't disturb
Letty."

She glided ahead of him, and when he came into the shadowy room she was
standing by the cabinet.

"I've something to show you," she said, and opened the carved box and
held it out to him.

"It's my father's ring," she said; "he broke my mother's heart--and I
won't break Anthony's."

Then, in halting sentences, she told him how that day she had come upon
the ring. She told him her mother's history. And he listened, and