her shrink behind
the chair.

She was not angry, but shocked and frightened, for she knew now what the
matter was and grew so pale, he saw it and asked pardon before she could
utter a rebuke.

"We'll talk of that tomorrow. It is very late. Go home now, please,
before Uncle comes," she said, trying to speak naturally yet betraying
her distress by the tremor of her voice and the sad anxiety in her eyes.

"Yes, yes, I will go you are tired I'll make it all right tomorrow." And
as if the sound of his uncle's name steadied him for an instant, Charlie
made for the door with an unevenness of gait which would have told the
shameful truth if his words had not already done so. Before he reached
it, however, the sound of wheels arrested him and, leaning against the
wall, he listened with a look of dismay mingled with amusement creeping
over his face. "Brutus has bolted now I am in a fix. Can't walk home
with this horrid dizziness in my head. It's the cold, Rose, nothing
else, I do assure you, and a chill yes, a chill. See here! Let one of
those fellows there lend me an arm no use to go after that brute. Won't
Mother be frightened though when he gets home?" And with that empty
laugh again, he fumbled for the door handle.

"No, no don't let them see you! Don't let anyone know! Stay here till
Uncle comes, and he'll take care of you. Oh, Charlie! How could you do
it! How could you when you promised?" And, forgetting fear in the sudden
sense of shame and anguish that came over her, Rose ran to him, caught
his hand from the lock, and turned the key; then, as if she could not
bear to see him standing there with that vacant smile on his lips, she
dropped into a chair and covered up her face.

The cry, the act, and, more than all, the sight of the bowed head would
have sobered poor Charlie if it had not been too late. He looked about
the room with a vague, despairing look, as if to find reason fast
slipping from his control, but heat and cold, excitement and reckless
pledging of many healths had done their work too well to make instant
sobriety possible, and owning his defeat with a groan, he turned away
and threw himself face-downward on the sofa, one of the saddest sights
the new year looked upon as it came in.

As she sat there with hidden eyes, Rose felt that something dear to her
was dead forever. The ideal, which all women cherish, look for, and too
often think they have found when love glorifies a mortal man, is hard to
give