illed
her with its tenderness:

'Audrey, you must never be afraid of me again.'

'I shall never need to be afraid again,' she returned softly. 'Oh,
Michael, if you only knew how dreadful it has been all the week! I would
not go through it again for worlds.'

'Has it been so bad as that?' in his old rallying tone, for he saw how
greatly she was moved.

'You have no idea how bad it was. I felt that I had done something very
bold and unmaidenly in writing that postscript to father's letter. I had
longed for your return; but after that I began to dread it: I was so
afraid of what you must think of me.'

'I think you have known my opinion on that subject for a great many
years,' he replied gently. 'If you had not been different from other
girls, if you had not been immeasurably above them all in my eyes, I
would never have asked you to send me that message. I knew I could rely
on your perfect truth, and you have not disappointed me.'

This delicate flattery soothed her and appeased her sensitiveness.
Michael watched her for a moment; then he drew up a chair to the fire in
his old way.

'You must sit there and talk to me for a little while,' he said
quietly.

And as she looked at him rather doubtfully, and suggested that her
mother would be wondering at their absence, he negatived the idea at
once.

'By this time your father will have told her everything; he has been in
my confidence all these months. No, they will not want us, and I have
not seen you yet--at least, you have not seen me; I am quite sure of
that.' And as Audrey's dimples came into play at this remark, he very
nearly made her feel shy again by saying, 'You have no idea how lovely
you have grown, Audrey! Has anyone told you so, I wonder?'

'No, of course not. Who do you think would talk such nonsense to me?'

But her blush made him still more certain of the fact.

'At any rate, it is the dearest face in the world to me,' he went on,
still more earnestly. 'Audrey, I think even if you had not written those
three little words, I must still have come home. I could not have stayed
away from you any longer.'

'If I had only known that, I might have spared myself a great deal of
pain,' she replied quickly; 'but they told me that you were going to
Greece and the Holy Land, and Mr. Abercrombie had come back alone, and I
thought--I thought that I should never see you again.'

'I began to have the same sort of feeling myself, and then I was so
tired of w