tones of the girl that grated strangely
upon the Boy's sensitive ear. What had happened? he wondered. What was
the new barrier between them? Was it the priest? Again the thought of
the priest worried him.

"Where is my friend, the Count de Roannes?" he ventured at last.

"He sailed for Paris last week."

Paul's heart leaped. Surely then their legal betrothal had not taken
place.

"What happened, Opal?"

"The inevitable!"

And again his heart bounded for joy! The inevitable! Surely that meant
that the girl's better nature had triumphed, had shown her the ignominy
of such a union in time to save her. He looked at her for further
information, but seeing her evident embarrassment, forbore to pursue the
question further.

They wandered out through the luxurious garden, and the spell of its
enchantment settled upon them both.

He pulled a crimson rose from a bush and began listlessly to strip the
thorns from the stalk. "Roses in September," he said, "are like love in
the autumn of life."

And they both thought again of the Count and a chill passed over their
spirits. The girl watched him curiously.

"Do you always cut the thorns from your roses?" she asked.

"Certainly-sooner or later. Don't you?"

"O no! I am a woman, you see, and I only hold my rose tightly in my
fingers and smile in spite of the pricks as if to convince the world
that my rose has no thorns."

"Is that honest?"

"Perhaps not--but--yes, I think it is! If one really loves a rose, you
see, one forgets that it has thorns--really forgets!".

"Until too late!"

But there was some undercurrent of hidden meaning even in this subject,
and Paul tried another.

He asked her about the books she had read since they parted and told her
of his travels. He painted for her a picture of the little cabin on the
western prairie, with its man and its woman and its baby, and she
listened with a strange softness in her eyes. He felt that she
understood.

There was a tiny lake in the garden, and they sat upon the shore and
looked into the water, at an unaccountable loss for words. At last Paul,
with a boyish laugh, relieved the situation by rolling up his sleeve and
dabbling for pebbles in the sand at the bottom.

There was not much said--only a word now and then, but both, in spite of
their consciousness of the barrier between them, were rejoicing in the
fact that they were together, while Paul, happy in his new-born
resolution, was singing in his hear