t it.

"You said," he insisted, "that you'd love me when we were married."

She turned her child's eyes on him in faint surprise:

"A wife loves her husband always, doesn't she?"

"Do _you_?"

"I suppose I shall.... I haven't been married very long--long enough
to feel as though I am really married. When I begin to realise it I
shall understand, of course, that I love you."

It was the calm and immature reply of a little girl playing house. He
knew it. He looked at her pure, perplexed profile of a child and knew
that what he had said was futile--understood that it was meaningless
to her, that it was only confusing a mind already dazed--a mind of
which too much had been expected, too much demanded.

He leaned over and kissed the cold, almost colourless cheek; her
little mechanical smile came back. Then they remembered the chauffeur
behind them and Brandes reddened. He was unaccustomed to a man on the
rumble.

"Could I talk to mother on the telephone when we get to New York?" she
asked presently, still painfully flushed.

"Yes, darling, of course."

"I just want to hear her voice," murmured Rue.

"Certainly. We can send her a wireless, too, when we're at sea."

That interested her. She enquired curiously in regard to wireless
telegraphy and other matters concerning ocean steamers.

* * * * *

In Albany her first wave of loneliness came over her in the stuffy
dining-room of the big, pretentious hotel, when she found herself
seated at a small table alone with this man whom she seemed, somehow
or other, to have married.

As she did not appear inclined to eat, Brandes began to search the
card for something to tempt her. And, glancing up presently, saw tears
glimmering in her eyes.

For a moment he remained dumb as though stunned by some sudden and
terrible accusation--for a moment only. Then, in an unsteady voice:

"Rue, darling. You must not feel lonely and frightened. I'll do
anything in the world for you. Don't you know it?"

She nodded.

"I tell you," he said in that even, concentrated voice of his which
scarcely moved his narrow lips, "I'm just crazy about you. You're my
own little wife. You're all I care about. If I can't make you happy
somebody ought to shoot me."

She tried to smile; her full lips trembled; a single tear, brimming,
fell on the cloth.

"I--don't mean to be silly.... But--Brookhollow seems--ended--forever...."

"It's only forty miles