n with no further word, and an hour later Frank encountered him
walking slowly up and down the terrace in the moonlight with Katrine.

They were talking earnestly, McDermott urging something which Francis
was glad to see Katrine was far from yielding. Twice he saw her shake
her head with great firmness, and once, as they came near him, he heard
her say, "I will not, Dermott," and, knowing the girl as he did, Frank
felt that, whatever the matter, it was settled with finality.

Try as he surely did, he found it impossible to have a word alone with
her that evening, and the next morning he learned from the servants that
her luggage was to be taken to the station the following day at an early
hour.

She was not at luncheon, and Frank was meditating on the possibility of
leaving with her on the early train, when a note was brought to him by
her maid.

Would you care to walk with me now? [it read] I should like to tell
you something before I leave.

KATRINE DULANY.

This was surely the unexpected, and he waited for her on the portico
with the feeling that there was some mistake, and that the maid might
reappear any minute to ask the missive back again.

But Katrine herself came around the corner from the greenhouses and
called to him from below. She wore a black walking-skirt, a black
leather jacket, and a three-cornered black hat, and Frank involuntarily
compared this very aristocratic-looking young person with the little
girl in the short-waisted frocks he had known, so many years ago, it
seemed, in North Carolina.

In silence they went down the driveway to the beach road, along the path
to the cliffs. There was a chill in the sea-wind, for the afternoon sun
gave only a rose-red glow, but little warmth, as they stood looking at
the crumpled reflections in the water. "It is almost sunset," Frank
began, abruptly, drawing nearer to her. "It might almost be a North
Carolina sunset, mightn't it? I don't know, Katrine, what you want of
me, but I want, for the sake of that summer full of sunsets which we
knew together, that you should let me tell my story and judge me--finest
woman--that--ever--lived--judge me after the telling as it may seem just
for you to do!"

There was a piteous quiver of her lips as her eyes looked bravely into
his as she nodded an acquiescence.

"When I left you, Katrine, like the coward I was, that dreadful morning,
so long ago, I wandered around like an Ishmaelite, more wretched