had easily been found, but instead of returning to her guests, she walked to the end of the broad hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the portico roof.

The twilight faded, and her consciousness of a heartache increased. For what is the use of having everything money can buy or the bounty of spring afford if you at the same time are troubled with a toothache? All this, her lovely house, her lovely garden, so grand in itself, was like a good gift wasted, as long as she was in a state of quarrel with her friend. It was full two weeks since their exchange of letters. Two weeks of absolute silence. Could it be possible that she would never see or hear from Gerald again?

No, it could not, she said. It was part of having faith in him to deny the possibility of his remaining furious forever at her hateful letter. No, she would not believe it of him; she thought better of him. She was much mistaken if he could be so mean. She would be willing to bet

There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate.

After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would not pause until he had rung the bell.

But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the house he stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the slender cane one knew so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to make a resolute slash with it to vindicate his irresolution.

After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then that a voice called out above him, "Hello, Gerald!"

He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from the terrace looked at each other for the space of a few heart-beats with mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked:

"Are n't you going to come in?"

Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end of his hesitation he asked:

"Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?"

"Why, certainly," answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow.

She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle's and Tom's voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the big ball-room and passed out through that.

The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and came to take her hand, saying:

"How good of you!"

"Well!" she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the situation, looking after her dignity and all that. "How jolly this is! And you 're all right again, Gerald. You 're well enough to walk on your legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you 're looking quite yourself again. Well," she sighed again heartily,-"it 's good for sore eyes to see you. You 're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset? Had n't we better go in?"

"This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow."

"Oh, I have n't got a thing to do," she precipitately assured him. "Come, we 'll walk up and down the path,-had n't we better?-so as not to be standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the stitch in your side?"

He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find it difficult

somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like a mill.

"Aurora dear," he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as much as of protest, "what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness, and you put me off. Do you call it kind?"

A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking. "Could n't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?" His gesture vaguely designated a green inclosure, in the midst of which were stone seats and a table, pale among the dark laurels.

But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his eye-sockets and kept them there.

"I am ridiculous!" he muttered and shook himself straight. After an ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, "I am ridiculous!" he said again, and without further concession to weakness started in: "I ought to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so deeply. It does n't do much good to say I am sorry."

"Your letter was all right," broke in Aurora. "I only did n't understand at first. Afterward I did. I tell you, that letter was all right."

"It was written in a mood-a perplexity, a despair, you have no means of understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done, I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves, which can start him raving and make him a

thing to laugh at. I had the common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, a tranquilizing neighborhood.

"It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest as they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost made up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various airings, I have gone on several walks alone, but till to-day I avoided to take the road toward this house. But all

at once it became too strong for me-not the pain, or the wish to see you, but the feeling that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who hate ingratitude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pass with you, with you, for an ungrateful beast!"

"Don't! don't, Gerald!" Aurora hushed him. "I can't let you talk like that. You know you could n't be ungrateful, nor ! could n't think it of you."

"No, I'm not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly asseverated. "I want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be!"

"There was nothing to be grateful for, nothing at all," insisted Aurora.

"And so when I wrote you in that brutal manner, dear-"

"That letter was all right." Aurora vigorously snatched away from him the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of compunction. "It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real unselfishness and consideration for me. You did n't want me talked about on your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a fool: I went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt and wanted to hurt back. But, bless you, I understand it all perfectly now. You need n't say another word. I understand the letter, Gerald, and I understand you."

"I am afraid," he said, letting go her hands and drawing a little apart, as if the most complete misunderstanding, after all, separated them-"I am afraid you do not

entirely. But this much at least is clear to you, is n't it, dear, that whatever I may be, I am not ungrateful? I shall not come to see you for a long time."

The astonished and acute attention of her whole being was indefinably expressed by the silence in which she now listened. "I am going to keep away from you," he went on, "till I feel out of danger."

"Why, what's the matter now?" she asked, with the vehemence of her surprise and disappointment.

"A trifle, woman dear. Oh, Lord, I see I shall have to go into it! Have n't you the imagination to see, you unaccountable person, how an unhappy mortal might be affected by such circumstances as destiny so lately prepared for your poor servant's trying? Day by day, night after night, that insidious kindness, that penetrating gentleness, that stupefying atmosphere of a woman's care and sympathy. Did n't you tell me once yourself—” Gerald's voice stiffened, and he pulled himself up again, discarding weakness-"did n't you once tell me yourself that a sick man is liable to fall in love with his nurse'? And, dear girl, I will not do it. I categorically refuse. It is too horrible. have finished with all that. No, not again. I know now that in order to have a little peace a person must not want anything. That is the price. We must n't want anything, Aurora. We must n't want anything, we must n't mind anything, we must n't care about anything, we must submit to everything!" This counsel of perfection came from Gerald almost in a sob.

I

"You make me laugh!" exclaimed Aurora in a snort of simple scorn.

"And so, Aurora, I am going to keep away from you for-I am not at the present moment quite able to say how long."

"You 're going to do nothing of the sort! There now!" burst from Aurora. "I'm not going to permit any such foolishness." She firmly proceeded to pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. "Now, Gerald, you pay attention to what I say, child. Can't you see for yourself, now you 've put it into words,

what nonsense all this is? You could no more, in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love with me, and you know it, than, I guess, I could with you, fond of you as I am. No, that is n't putting it strongly enough," she gallantly amended; "you could n't do it, it stands. to reason, even so easily as I could. What you felt was just the result of you being so weak, all full of fever dreams and delusions. And you still believe in it a little because you are n't yet good and strong. Now you listen to what I've got to say. The wisest thing you can do, young man, instead of keeping away and having ideas and waiting till these gradually wear off -the best thing you can do, I say, is to stay right at my side and get sobered up by contact with things as they actually are. Not only the best thing, but a lot fairer to me, does n't it seem so to you? How do you think I like to have you go kiting off the moment I 've got you back again? When I 've missed you so! Now, Geraldino, rely on Auroretta. Let her manage this case. Don't you be afraid; she'll cure you in two frisks."

"It just might be, you know, that you were right," said Gerald, dubiously, with the modesty of tone that would beseem a girl after a bucket of cold water had quelled her hysterics.

"Gracious goodness!" She bounced to her feet. "Here I was forgetting! Gerald," she said in haste, "I'm sorry, but we'll have to go indoors. They'll be wondering where I am, and starting the hunt for me."

"They? You have guests

"Only one. Come on in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You 've heard me speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is his son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. He's in Florence just for a visit. Come on, I want you to know each other. You'll be sure to like him."

"I don't think I will. I mean that I don't think I will go into the house with you, Aurora."

"Now, Gerald," she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds of impending