d its dim length. In the orchard
he touched her sleeve again and led the way.

As they came out behind the house she detained him. Stopping short, she
shook his hand from her arm. She spoke in a single breath, as if it were
all one word:

"Will you tell me why you go? It is not late. Why do you wish to leave
me, when I shall not see you again?"

"The Lord be good to me!" he broke out, all his long-pent passion of
dreams rushing to his lips, now that the barrier fell. "Don't you see
it is because I can't bear to let you go? I hoped to get away without
saying it. I want to be alone. I want to be with myself and try to
realize. I didn't want to make a babbling idiot of myself--but I am!
It is because I don't want another second of your sweetness to leave
an added pain when you've gone. It is because I don't want to hear your
voice again, to have it haunt me in the loneliness you will leave--but
it's useless, useless! I shall hear it always, just as I shall always
see your face, just as I have heard your voice and seen your face these
seven years--ever since I first saw you, a child at Winter Harbor. I
forgot for a while; I thought it was a girl I had made up out of my own
heart, but it was you--you always! The impression I thought nothing of
at the time, just the merest touch on my heart, light as it was, grew
and grew deeper until it was there forever. You've known me twenty-four
hours, and I understand what you think of me for speaking to you like
this. If I had known you for years and had waited and had the right to
speak and keep your respect, what have I to offer you? I, couldn't even
take care of you if you went mad as I and listened. I've no excuse for
this raving. Yes, I have!"

He saw her in another second of lightning, a sudden, bright one. Her
back was turned to him; she had taken a few startled steps from him.

"Ah," he cried, "you are glad enough, now, to see me go! I knew it. I
wanted to spare myself that. I tried not to be a hysterical fool in your
eyes." He turned aside and his head fell on his breast. "God help me,"
he said, "what will this place be to me now?"

The breeze had risen; it gathered force; it was a chill wind, and there
rose a wailing on the prairie. Drops of rain began to fall.

"You will not think a question implied in this," he said more
composedly, and with an unhappy laugh at himself. "I believe you will
not think me capable of asking you if you care----"

"No," she answered; "I-