hundred-leaved bush--touched with its first hint of tender green. The
mist from the fountain was like a veil which hid the mocking face of
the bronze boy.

But Mary and Roger had no eyes for these warnings; each was famished
for the other, and this meeting gave to Mary, at least, a sense of
renewed life.

She spoke of her future. "Constance and Gordon want me to come to
them. But I hate to give up my work. I don't want to be discontented.
Yet I dread the loneliness here. Did you ever think I should be such a
coward?"

"You are not a coward--you are a woman--wanting the things that belong
to you."

She sat very still. "I wonder--what are the things which belong to a
woman?"

"Love--a home--happiness."

"And you think I want these things?"

"I know it."

"How do you know?"

"Because you have tried work--and it has failed. You have tried
independence--and it has failed. You have tried freedom, and have
found it bondage."

He was once more in the grip of the dream which he had dreamed as he
had sat with Mary's letter in his hand on Cousin Patty's porch. If she
would come to him there would be no more loneliness. His love should
fill her life, and there would be, too, the love of his people. She
should win hearts while he won souls. If only she would care enough to
come.

It was the fear that she might not care which suddenly gripped him.
Surely this was not the moment to press his demands upon her--when
sorrow lay so heavily on her heart.

So blind, and cruel in his blindness, he held back the words which rose
to his lips.

"Some day life will bring the things which belong to you," he said at
last. "I pray God that it may bring them to you some day."

A line of Browning's came into her mind, and rang like a knell--"Some
day, meaning no day."

She shivered and rose. "We must go in; there's rain in those clouds,
and wind."

He rose also and stood looking down at her. Her eyes came up to his,
her clear eyes, shadowed now by pain. What he might have said to her
in another moment would have saved both of them much weariness and
heartache. But he was not to say it, for the storm was upon them
driving them before it, slamming doors, banging shutters in the big
house as they came to it--a miniature cyclone, in its swift descent.

And as if he had ridden in on the wings of the storm came Porter
Bigelow, his red mane blown like a flame back from his face, his long
coat flapping.

He stop