f my own."

"I didn't say you couldn't, man! But _I_ want a hand in this thing.
Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," said Hartley, turning on
him. "What the thunder is the matter of you anyway? I like the girl, and
she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an angel----"

"There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert hastily. "F'r God's
sake don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know it!"

Hartley stared at him as he turned away.

"Well, by jinks! What _is_ the matter o' you?"

He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was
homesick.

Albert was beginning to have a vague under-consciousness of his real
feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as
long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one
point ceaselessly--a dreary prospect, in which the slender girl-figure
had no place--and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank,
and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.

When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final
skating party down on the river, he was as far from a solution as ever.
He had avoided all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a
man might at the parting of two paths, saying: "I will not choose; I can
not choose. I will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."

They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be
said; the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the
fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the
vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.

"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here--" she paused
and looked up with a daring smile--"seems as if you'd been here always."

It was about half past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the
kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was downtown
finishing up his business.

Albert's throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous;
the girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.

"Well, Maud, I suppose--you know--we're going away to-morrow."

"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"

"I don't expect to--I don't see how."

"Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her
clasped hands straining.

"I must--I must!" he muttered, not looking at her, not daring to see her
face.

"Oh, what can I do--_we_ do, withou