me, no matter what
distance separated us, and that I should come to you at top-speed to set
things right. I've hardly seen your face, and yet I know your dear, deep
eyes are troubled; I had barely heard your voice before I felt its
weariness."

Natalie bent forward until her face came under the light.

"Yes, I'm tired," she said; "or, rather, I was tired when I first came
in. I'm better now, since I've had my tea. But you're right, Johnny
boy,--there's something more. I'm troubled, desperately troubled and
heartsick. I've been trying to make myself believe that it's all
imagination, that I have no reason for feeling as I do; but I'm afraid I
can't manage it. John, I thought I saw Spencer Cavendish to-day."

"Spencer Cavendish? Are you sure? I had almost forgotten his
existence!--Of course, it's not impossible; but I imagined he had taken
root in some South Sea island long ago. That's what he was always
expecting to do, you remember. How I have hated that man!"

"You were good friends once."

"Yes, and should be yet, if I had not been the most suspicious mortal
that ever breathed, and he the most hot-blooded. There was a reason, you
know,--a little reason, but the most important in the world! I was
jealous, Natalie, insanely jealous. I could forgive him everything now."

"That hurts me, John. I'm so happy, boy dear, that I want everybody else
to be happy as well. Oh, why is it that a girl must always have that one
thought on her mind, which is so hard, so hard?--I mean the thought of
the good men, the true, brave, loyal men, whom she has cared for, who
have been her best friends perhaps, and yet whom she has been forced to
hurt bitterly because they asked her for something she was not able to
give. A man has so much easier a road! His happiness, when it comes to
him, isn't clouded by the thought of those to whom it means the loss of
their last remnant of hope. They are there, the disappointed ones, but
he doesn't know, he doesn't know! He hasn't on his conscience the memory
of hearts cruelly wounded,--wounded even to death. He doesn't in memory
see the eagerness in a good friend's eyes die to disillusion, to
hopelessness, to bitter, bitter sorrow. He doesn't have to remember how
the life died suddenly out of a voice that had been tender and eloquent.
He doesn't sicken with the thought that his hand has given a blow so
merciless, so unmerited, and yet so inevitable. Worst of all, for the
girl, is the after-discover