arked, with a little excited
laugh. Then, from an undercurrent of exhilaration, it occurred to her
that she had never laughed so in all these years.

"Well," said Laurie abruptly, turning upon her, "how am I goin' to start
out? Shall we hark back to old scores? I know what come between us. So
do you. Have we got to talk it out, or can we begin now?"

"Begin now," replied Amelia faintly. Her breath choked her. He stretched
out his arms to her in sudden passion. His hands touched her sleeves
and, with an answering rapidity of motion, she drew back. She shrank
within herself, and her face gathered a look of fright. "No! no! no!"
she cried strenuously.

His arms fell at his sides, and he looked at her in amazement.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

Amelia had retreated, until she stood now with one hand on the table.
She could not look at him, and when she answered, her voice shook.

"There's nothin' the matter," she answered. "Only you mustn't--yet."

A shade of relief passed over his face, and he smiled.

"There, there!" he said, "never you mind. I understand. But if I come
over the last of the week, I guess it will be different. Won't it be
different, Milly?"

"Yes," she owned, with a little sob in her throat, "it will be
different."

Thrown out of his niche of easy friendliness with circumstance, he stood
there in irritated consciousness that here was some subtile barrier
which he had not foreseen. Ever since John Porter's death, there had
been strengthening in him a joyous sense that Milly's life and his own
must have been running parallel all this time, and that it needed only a
little widening of channels to make them join. His was no crass
certainty of finding her ready to drop into his hand; it was rather a
childlike, warm-hearted faith in the permanence of her affection for
him, and perhaps, too, a shrewd estimate of his own lingering youth
compared with John Porter's furrowed face and his fifty-five years. But
now, with this new whiffling of the wind, he could only stand rebuffed
and recognize his own perplexity.

"You do care, don't you, Milly?" he asked, with a boy's frank ardor.
"You want me to come again?"

All her own delight in youth and the warm naturalness of life had rushed
back upon her.

"Yes," she answered eagerly. "I'll tell you the truth. I always did tell
you the truth. I do want you to come."

"But you don't want me to-night!" He lifted his brows, pursing his lips
whimsically;