ck him with a new pang of
conviction, and he felt helpless before it.

"Why don't you say something, David?" asked the girl, rapping her foot
on the floor and unconsciously pulling the kitten's fur. "You're not
angry with me, are you?"

David saw that he must speak, and he determined to dissimulate no
longer. "No, Janet, but can't you see how it must look to me? How can
you expect me to be happy over it? Do you suppose, dear, that you
could feel toward me, after a year at college, just as you do now?
Don't you see how it would separate us and you'd have all your new
friends and studies to take up your time and I'd just be plodding
along here in the woods like a clod of turf? How could you ever keep
on loving me? Don't you see, Janet, how it sort o' breaks my heart to
say yes?"

The jets of milk shot into the pail with an angry rapidity. The bar of
sunlight lay almost horizontally now across the upper emptiness of the
barn, transforming the thick-hung cobwebs into golden draperies and
accentuating the twilight gloom below. Janet threw the kitten out of
her lap and, jumping from the chair, walked nervously to the window
and looked out absently upon the meadow below.

"Well, I supposed it would come to that," she said, with some
indignation in her voice. "It's nice to feel that you can't trust me
out of your sight. Don't you think that if you really loved me as you
say you'd be as glad as I was that I could get a better education? But
of course, if you're afraid to trust me, why, I suppose I can give it
up."

The strain of decision had been a hard one for Janet, and she was now
on the verge of giving way under it. Her shoulders shook, and she put
her face in her hands. David heard her sobbing softly.

"Janet," he said, "if you think that this is going to be a valuable
thing for you, I'm not going to say a word against it. You know that
every wish I've got is for your good, and that's God's truth. If you
think it's best to go, I'm going to try to think so too, and I'll do
everything I can to make you happy."

Janet had left the window and came toward him, a joyful smile breaking
through her tears. "You are a dear, good boy, and I love you," she
said, and allowed him to kiss her. He held her long in his big arms
and his own eyes filled with burning tears.

He could not banish the thought that this might be the last time.

III

The gray desolation of a March afternoon brooded out over the wide
meadows, out ove