his joy. He was more her contemporary, he found, than
formerly; she had grown a great deal in the past two years, and a
certain affliction which her father's fixity had given him concerning
her passed in the assurance of change which she herself gave him.

She had changed her world, and grown to it, but her nature had not
changed. Even her look had not changed, and he told her how he had seen
his picture in her at the moment of their meeting in the street. They
all went in to verify his impression from the painting. "Yes, that is
the way you looked."

"It seems to me that is the way I felt," she asserted.

Frank went about the house-work, and left her to their guest. When
Whitwell came back from the post-office, where he said he would only be
gone a minute, he did not rejoin Westover and Cynthia in the parlor.

The parlor door was shut; he had risked his fate, and they were talking
it over. Cynthia was not sure; she was sure of nothing but that there
was no one in the world she cared for so much; but she was not sure that
was enough. She did not pretend that she was surprised; she owned that
she had sometimes expected it; she blamed herself for not expecting it
then.

Westover said that he did not blame her for not knowing her mind; he had
been fifteen years learning his own fully. He asked her to take all the
time she wished. If she could not make sure after all, he should always
be sure that she was wise and good. She told him everything there was
to tell of her breaking with Jeff, and he thought the last episode a
supreme proof of her wisdom and goodness.

After a certain time they went for a walk in the warm summer moonlight
under the elms, where they had met on the avenue.

"I suppose," she said, as they drew near her door again, "that people
don't often talk it over as we've done."

"We only know from the novels," he answered. "Perhaps people do, oftener
than is ever known. I don't see why they shouldn't."

"No."

"I've never wished to be sure of you so much as since you've wished to
be sure of yourself."

"And I've never been so sure as since you were willing to let me," said
Cynthia.

"I am glad of that. Try to think of me, if that will help my cause, as
some one you might have always known in this way. We don't really know
each other yet. I'm a great deal older than you, but still I'm not so
very old."

"Oh, I don't care for that. All I want to be certain of is that the
feeling I have is really