she turned back to the letter,
and re-read the sentence.

"Katrine and I have shared many a joke together."

For a moment the girl frowned, then suddenly a wistful expression stole
into her eyes. She herself had enjoyed so few jokes in these long flat
years! The photographs had the advantage there. She found herself for
the moment almost envying the photographs. The laughing one, that was
to say; not the sad. The sad one had been guilty of unpardonable
boldness in looking sorry for a strange man; in exchanging glances with
him, forsooth! from the doorway, in covert sympathy with his bachelor
estate!

"If it had been just an ordinary friendly correspondence, one might--
perhaps--have agreed! It would be interesting to be friends with a man,
but--but _it is not_! He doesn't mean it to be; he doesn't mean me to
believe that he means it. It's a kind of verbal `walking out'; a
correspondence `with a view to matrimony!' In a few months' time he
would be asking--"

Katrine jumped to her feet, and paced excitedly to the window, the
letter still clutched in her hand. It crackled beneath her fingers, as
she stood staring out into the lane.

A man in a white apron was walking rapidly along the farther side.
Rogers, the butcher's foreman, homeward bound for his mid-day meal. The
clock of Saint Dunstan's struck twelve chimes, and celebrated the
occasion by chiming a verse of "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

Every morning of the year that white-robed figure passed up the lane at
precisely the same hour; every morning the same verse was ground out on
the church bells.

"And there is Martin!" said Katrine, in a slow, dull tone of finality.
"There is Martin!"

For the first time in her experience she felt a flood of pity for her
own self-enforced celibacy. Hitherto marriage had presented no especial
lure and the two men who had appeared as suitors had failed to awaken
even a passing interest. No one could look at Katrine's face and fail
to realise that she was capable of deep and passionate love, but she had
none of the easy sentiment of the ordinary young girl, and having failed
to meet her mate, the softer part of her nature was still dormant.
Moreover she had an immense advantage over the ordinary unmarried woman,
in being mistress of a home, in the management of which she could
indulge to the full her natural feminine instincts. It had appeared to
her that if Martin were more responsive, she could be satisfied