"Thank you!" he rushed away, feeling
very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he
wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations
for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to
behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the
grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite
allusion to the Devil,--

"This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life
I think I feel the better for it already."

And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from
worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward
strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been
saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory
that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret
soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which
little Debby Wilder whispered "No," and kissed him.

As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand,
thinking sorrowfully to herself,--

"What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from
true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo
it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for
Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him,
if I search the house,--and tell him all, though I never dare to look
him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow."

Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the
steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic
fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.

It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular
delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes
of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but
in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the
countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more
trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest
love-lay ever sung.

Frank looked at Debby, and "all her heart stood up in her eyes," as she
stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,--

"Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago."

Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any