his tongue, and he asked:--

"Why not? Come on. If you don't know any one up there, go to the Fifth
Avenue; it's all right, and I'll get tickets, and we'll go every night
and both matinees. Come on!" he urged.

She was aflame and could not think. "Oh--don't, Bob, don't--not now.
Please don't," she begged, in as low a tone as she dared to use.

Adrian was thundering on about the tariff, and the general was
wrangling with him. The Barclays were talking to themselves, and the
children were clattering about underfoot, and in the trees overhead.
Bob's eyes and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw of
pathos and yearning, and he said: "Well, why not? It's no worse to go
than to want to go. What's wrong about it--Molly, do you think--"

He did not finish the sentence, for Adrian had ceased talking, and
Molly, seeing his jealous eyes upon her, rose and moved away. But
before they left that night she found occasion to say, "I've been
thinking about it, Bob, and maybe I will."

In the year that had passed since Hendricks had left her sobbing in
the chair on the porch of the Culpepper home, a current between them
had been reestablished, and was fed by the chance passing in a store,
a smile at a reception, a good morning on the street, and the current
was pulsing through their veins night and day. But that fine September
morning, as she stood on the veranda of her home with a dust-cap on
her head, cleaning up the litter her parents had made in packing, she
was not ready for what rushed into her soul from the letter Dolan left
her, as he hurried away to overtake the band that was turning from
Lincoln Avenue into Main Street. She sat in a chair to read it, and
for a moment after she had read it, she held it open in her lap and
gazed at the sunlight mottling the blue grass before her, through the
elm trees. Her lips were parted and her eyes wide, and she breathed
slowly. The tune the band was playing--McHurdie's song--sank into
her memory there that day so that it always brought back the mottled
sunshine, the flowers blooming along the walk, and the song of a robin
from a lilac bush near by. She folded the letter carefully, and put it
inside her dress, and then moving mechanically, took it out and read
it again:--

"MY DARLING, MY DARLING: There is no use struggling any more. You
must come. I will meet you in the city at the morning train, the one
that leaves the Ridge here at 2.35 A.M. We can go to the