ad left her he
had said to himself with long-drawn breath, "She's a corking kid."

And this time there had been no laughter in his eyes.

All that winter Anne worked, a little striving creature, with her head
held high!

Maxwell was in town, for Congress had convened. But he had not come to
see her. Now and then when there was a night session she went up to the
House and sat far back in the Gallery, where, unperceived, she could
listen to her lover's voice. Then she would steal away, a little ghost,
down the shadowy stairway; but there were no games now with Lafayette!

Amy and Murray were to be married in June. They had enjoyed a dignified
and leisurely engagement, and Amy had bloomed in the sunshine of
Murray's approbation. Anne's salary had helped a great deal in getting
the trousseau together. Most of the salary, indeed, had been spent for
that. The table was, as usual, meagre, but Anne had not seemed to care.

She was therefore rather white and thin when, on the day that Congress
adjourned, Maxwell came out to Georgetown to see her. It had been a long
session, and it was spring.

There were white lilacs in a great blue jar in the Merryman library, and
through the long window a glimpse of a thin little moon in a faint green
sky.

As he looked at Anne, Maxwell felt a lump in his throat. She had given
him her hand and had smiled at him. "How are the kittens?" she had asked
in an effort to be gay.

He did not answer her question. He went, rather, directly to the point.
"Anne, why wouldn't you kiss me on that last night?"

She flushed to the roots of her hair. "It--it was because I loved you,
Max."

"I thought so. But you had to prove it to yourself?"

"Yes."

"Anne, that's why I've let you alone all winter--so that you might prove
it. But--I can't go on. It has been an awful winter for me, Anne."

It had been an awful winter for her. But she had come out of it knowing
herself. And even when at last his arms were about her and he was
telling her that he would never let her go, she had a plea to make:

"Don't let me live too softly, Max. Life isn't a feather bed--You belong
to the world. I must go with you toward the big things. But now and then
we'll run back to the farm."

"What do I care where we run, so that we run--together!"

THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

"Although my ancestry is all of New England, I was born in th