y. We
may say that in accepting me you are accepting their comfortable
future. Of course you could not expect things to go on any longer in
this impossible way, as I have need of the home and family I am really
entitled to, now could you?" The Senator bent forward and finished his
sentence in his most beguiling tone as he poured the hateful glance
all over her again so that her blood stopped in her veins from very
fear and repulsion.

"No," she said slowly, with her eyes down on the bowl of butter on
the table before her; "no, things couldn't go on as they have any
longer. I have felt that for some time." She paused a second, then
lifted her deep eyes and looked straight into his, and the wounded
light in their blue depth was shadowed in the pride of the glance.
"You are right--you must not be kept out of your own any longer. But
you will--will you give me just a little time to--to get used to--to
thinking about it? Will you go now and leave me--and come back in a
few days? It is the last favor I shall ever ask of you. I promise when
you come back to--to pay the debt." And the color flooded over her
face, then receded, to leave her white and controlled.

"I felt sure you would see it that way; immediately, immediately, my
dear," answered the Senator, as he rose to take his departure. A
triumphant note boomed in his big gloating voice, but some influence
that it is given a woman to exhale in a desperate self-defense kept
him from bestowing anything more than an ordinary pressure on the cold
hand laid in his. Then with a heavy jauntiness he crossed the Road,
mounted his horse and, tipping his wide hat in a conquering-hero wave,
rode on down Providence Road toward Boliver.

And for a long, quiet moment Rose Mary stood leaning against the old
stone table perfectly still, with her hand pressing the sharp-edge
paper against her heart; then she sank into a chair and, stretching
her arms across the cold table, she let her head sink until the chill
of the stone came cool to her burning cheeks. So this was the door
that was to be opened in the stone wall--she had been blind and hadn't
seen!

And across the hills away by the sea he was tired and cold and
hungry--with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket. He was
discouraged and overworked, and a time was coming when she would not
have the right to shelter his heart in hers. Once when he had been so
ill, before he ever became conscious of her at all, his head had
fallen ov