ot bear to lose by replying. She sat listening to him with
half-shut eyes, determined not to answer until he had made an end of
speaking. But she said to herself, with a tenderness which made her
heart beat more than her lover's words, "How surprised he will be when
I tell him he shall not go."

The rustling of Mrs. Belding's ample approach broke in upon her trance
and Farnham's litany. He rose, not without some confusion, to greet
her, and Alice, with bright and even playful eyes, said, "Mamma, what
do you think this errant young cavalier has come to say to us?"

Mrs. Belding looked with puzzled inquiry from one to the other.

"Simply," continued Alice, "that he is off for Japan in a day or two,
and he wants to know if we have any commissions for him."

"Nonsense! Arthur, I won't listen to it. Come over to dinner this
evening and tell me all about it. I've got an appointment this very
minute at our Oriental Gospel rooms and cannot wait to talk to you now.
But this evening, you must tell me what it all means, and I hope you
will have changed your mind by that time."

The good lady did not even sit down, but rustled briskly away. Perhaps
she divined more of what was toward than appeared--but she did as she
would have wished to be done by, when she was young, and left the young
people to their own devices.

Farnham turned to Alice, who was still standing, and said, "Alice, my
own love, can you not give me one word of hope to carry with me? I
cannot forget you. My mind cannot change. Perhaps yours may, when the
ocean is between us, and you have time to reflect on what I have said.
I spoke too soon and too rashly. But I will make amends for that by
long silence. Then perhaps you will forgive me--perhaps you will recall
me. I will obey your call from the end of the world."

He held out his hand to her. She gave him hers with a firm warm grasp.
He might have taken courage from this, but her composure and her
inscrutable smile daunted him.

"You are not going yet," she said. "You have forgotten what you came
for."

"Yes--that song. I must hear it again. You must not think I am growing
daft, but that song has haunted me all day in the strangest way. There
is something in the way _you_ sing it--the words and your voice
together--that recall some association too faint for me to grasp. I can
neither remember what it is, nor forget it. I have tried to get it out
of my mind, but I have an odd impression that I would better