e sweet harbingers of spring.

Just then he heard voices, realizing with a throb of delight that, at
any rate, Rose had not left home to meet Claude, as he had asked her to
do. Looking through the branches, he saw the two standing together, Mrs.
Brooks's horse, with the offensive trunk in the back of the wagon, being
hitched to a tree near by. There was nothing in the tableau to stir
Stephen to fury, but he read between the lines and suffered as he
read--suffered and determined to sacrifice himself if he must, so that
Rose could have what she wanted, this miserable apology for a man. He
had never been the husband for Rose; she must take her place in a larger
community, worthy of her beauty and charm.

Claude was talking and gesticulating ardently. Rose's head was bent and
the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly Claude raised his hat,
and with a passionate gesture of renunciation walked swiftly to the
wagon, and looking back once, drove off with the utmost speed of which
the Brooks's horse was capable,--Rose waving him a farewell with one
hand and wiping her eyes with the other.

X. The Turquoise Ring

Stephen stood absolutely still in front of the opening in the trees, and
as Rose turned she met him face to face. She had never dreamed his eyes
could be so stern, his mouth so hard, and she gave a sob like a child.

"You seem to be in trouble," Stephen said in a voice so cold she thought
it could not be his.

"I am not in trouble, exactly," Rose stammered, concealing her
discomfiture as well as possible. "I am a little unhappy because I
have made some one else unhappy; and now that you know it, you will be
unhappy too, and angry besides, I suppose, though you've seen everything
there was to see."

"There is no occasion for sorrow," Stephen said. "I did n't mean to
break in on any interview; I came over to give you back your freedom.
If you ever cared enough for me to marry me, the time has gone by. I am
willing to own that I over-persuaded you, but I am not the man to take a
girl against her inclinations, so we will say good-bye and end the thing
here and now. I can only wish"--here his smothered rage at fate almost
choked him--"that, when you were selecting another husband, you had
chosen a whole man!"

Rose quivered with the scorn of his tone. "Size is n't everything!" she
blazed.

"Not in bodies, perhaps; but it counts for something in hearts and
brains, and it is convenient to have a sense