ind; but I never saw any
of them--until the day I left. They made me an offer then."

"And Old Reliable?"

Roberts hesitated, then he laughed oddly.

"I paid a parting visit there too. The remains weren't decent junk when
the same six got through expressing their feelings that night."

CHAPTER V

FULFILMENT

An hour had passed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot
beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the
annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating,
barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born.
Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and
the girl idling beside.

"Poverty, work, subservience," conversation had drifted where it would,
at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty
years; "poverty, work, subservience," the man had paused there to laugh,
the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could
express. "Yes; they're old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I'm
not likely to forget the contrast they've made, ever, no matter what the
future holds."

"You've not forgotten, then, what's past,--overlooked it? Isn't it
better to forget, sometimes,--some things?"

"Forget?" The man was looking straight up into space. "I wish I could
forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me--hard at times,
and I don't want to be hard. But I can't ever. Memory is branded in too
deeply."

The girl was picking a blade of grass to pieces, bit by bit.

"I'm disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished," she said
low. "That's what has made me afraid of you sometimes."

The man did not stir.

"Are you afraid of me sometimes, really?" he asked.

"Yes, horribly--as much afraid as when we were coming out here to-day."

"I'm sorry, Elice, sorry for several reasons. Most of all because I love
you."

It was the first word of the kind that had ever passed between them. Yet
neither showed surprise, nor did either change position. It was as though
he had said that gravitation makes the apple fall, or that the earth was
round, a thing they had both known for long, had become instinctively
adjusted to.

"I knew that," said the girl gently, "and know too that you're sorry I am
afraid. You can't help it. If it weren't true, though, you wouldn't be
you."

The man looked at her gravely.

"You think it will always be that way?" he asked. "You'll a