ain Jim 'sets out to
sea,'" agreed Gilbert.

The following evening he went to the house up the brook. Anne wandered
dismally around until his return.

"Well, what did Leslie say?" she demanded when he came in.

"Very little. I think she felt rather dazed."

"And is she going to have the operation?"

"She is going to think it over and decide very soon."

Gilbert flung himself wearily into the easy chair before the fire. He
looked tired. It had not been an easy thing for him to tell Leslie.
And the terror that had sprung into her eyes when the meaning of what
he told her came home to her was not a pleasant thing to remember.
Now, when the die was cast, he was beset with doubts of his own wisdom.

Anne looked at him remorsefully; then she slipped down on the rug
beside him and laid her glossy red head on his arm.

"Gilbert, I've been rather hateful over this. I won't be any more.
Please just call me red-headed and forgive me."

By which Gilbert understood that, no matter what came of it, there
would be no I-told-you-so's. But he was not wholly comforted. Duty in
the abstract is one thing; duty in the concrete is quite another,
especially when the doer is confronted by a woman's stricken eyes.

Some instinct made Anne keep away from Leslie for the next three days.
On the third evening Leslie came down to the little house and told
Gilbert that she had made up her mind; she would take Dick to Montreal
and have the operation.

She was very pale and seemed to have wrapped herself in her old mantle
of aloofness. But her eyes had lost the look which had haunted
Gilbert; they were cold and bright; and she proceeded to discuss
details with him in a crisp, business-like way. There were plans to be
made and many things to be thought over. When Leslie had got the
information she wanted she went home. Anne wanted to walk part of the
way with her.

"Better not," said Leslie curtly. "Today's rain has made the ground
damp. Good-night."

"Have I lost my friend?" said Anne with a sigh. "If the operation is
successful and Dick Moore finds himself again Leslie will retreat into
some remote fastness of her soul where none of us can ever find her."

"Perhaps she will leave him," said Gilbert.

"Leslie would never do that, Gilbert. Her sense of duty is very
strong. She told me once that her Grandmother West always impressed
upon her the fact that when she assumed any responsibility she must
never shirk it, no m