er before seen her in this mood,
with brooding brows, and the darkness of the world's pain in her eyes.
All her glow had faded--she was a dun thrush-like creature, clothed in
semi-tints; yet she seemed much nearer than when her smile shot light on
him.

He stood motionless, his eyes absently fixed on the bunch of violets at
her feet. Suddenly he raised his head, and broke out with a boyish
blush: "Could it have been Wyant who was trying to see you?"

"Dr. Wyant--trying to see me?" She lowered her hands to the desk, and
sat looking at him with open wonder.

He saw the irrelevance of his question, and burst, in spite of himself,
into youthful laughter.

"I mean--It's only that an unknown visitor called at the house
yesterday, and insisted that you must have arrived. He seemed so annoyed
at not finding you, that I thought...I imagined...it must be some one
who knew you very well...and who had followed you here...for some
special reason...."

Her colour rose again, as if caught from his; but her eyes still
declared her ignorance. "Some special reason----?"

"And just now," he blurted out, "when you said you might not stay much
longer with Cicely--I thought of the visit--and wondered if there was
some one you meant to marry...."

A silence fell between them. Justine rose slowly, her eyes screened
under the veil she had lowered. "No--I don't mean to marry," she said,
half-smiling, as she came down from the platform.

Restored to his level, her small shadowy head just in a line with his
eyes, she seemed closer, more approachable and feminine--yet Amherst did
not dare to speak.

She took a few steps toward the window, looking out into the deserted
street. "It's growing dark--I must go home," she said.

"Yes," he assented absently as he followed her. He had no idea what she
was saying. The inner voices in which they habitually spoke were growing
louder than outward words. Or was it only the voice of his own desires
that he heard--the cry of new hopes and unguessed capacities of living?
All within him was flood-tide: this was the top of life, surely--to feel
her alike in his brain and his pulses, to steep sight and hearing in the
joy of her nearness, while all the while thought spoke clear: "This is
the mate of my mind."

He began again abruptly. "Wouldn't you marry, if it gave you the chance
to do what you say--if it offered you hard work, and the opportunity to
make things better...for a great many people...as no