rth, once more, to all your many friends
and to society. You are too young, and too gifted, to remain here in
this sluggish backwater, alongside a derelict like me. It is not right.
You must make for the open stream again and let the free wind and the
strong current bear you gladly on your appointed course. And my
gratitude and my blessing will go with you always. But you must delay
no longer. For me you have done enough."

For a little space Honoria held her friend's hand in silence.

"Are--are--you tired of me then?" she said.

"Ah, my dear!" Katherine exclaimed. And the exclamation was more
reassuring, somehow, than any denial could have been.

"After all," Honoria went on, "I really don't see why you're to have a
monopoly of faithfulness. There's selfishness now, if you like--to
appropriate a virtue _en bloc_ not leaving a rag, not the veriest
scrappit of it for anybody else! And then, has it never occurred to
you, that I may be just every bit as greedy of your companionship as
you of mine--more so, I fancy, because--because----"

Honoria bowed her head and kissed the hand she held, once again.

"You see--I know it sounds as if I was rather a beast--perhaps I
am--but I never cared for any one--really to care, I mean--till I cared
for you."

"My dear!"--Katherine said again, wondering, shrinking somewhat, at
once touched and almost repulsed. The younger woman's attitude was so
far removed from her own experience.

"Does it displease you? Does it seem to you unnatural?" Honoria asked
quickly.

"A little," Lady Calmady answered, smiling, yet very tenderly.

"All the same it's quite true. You opened a door, somehow, that had
always been shut. I hardly believed in its existence. Of course I had
read plenty about the--affections, shall we call them? And had heard
women and girls, and men, too, for that matter, talk about them pretty
freely. But it bored me a good deal. I thought it all rather silly, and
rather nasty perhaps."--Honoria shook her head. "It didn't appeal to me
in the least. But when you opened the door"--she paused, her face very
grave, yet with a smile on it, as she looked away at the little figures
anticking upon the hearth. "Oh, dear me, I own I was half scared," she
said, "it let in such a lot of light!"

But, for this speech, Lady Calmady had no immediate answer. And so the
quiet came back, settling down sensibly on the room again--even as,
when at dawn the camp is struck, the secular quiet