ted to tell you.... I wish I could think
of you as happier, less lonely.... Things are sure to change for you by
and by...."

"Things don't change at North Dormer: people just get used to them."

The answer seemed to break up the order of his prearranged consolations,
and he sat looking at her uncertainly. Then he said, with his sweet
smile: "That's not true of you. It can't be."

The smile was like a knife-thrust through her heart: everything in her
began to tremble and break loose. She felt her tears run over, and stood
up.

"Well, good-bye," she said.

She was aware of his taking her hand, and of feeling that his touch was
lifeless.

"Good-bye." He turned away, and stopped on the threshold. "You'll say
good-bye for me to Verena?"

She heard the closing of the outer door and the sound of his quick tread
along the path. The latch of the gate clicked after him.

The next morning when she arose in the cold dawn and opened her shutters
she saw a freckled boy standing on the other side of the road and
looking up at her. He was a boy from a farm three or four miles down the
Creston road, and she wondered what he was doing there at that hour, and
why he looked so hard at her window. When he saw her he crossed over and
leaned against the gate unconcernedly. There was no one stirring in the
house, and she threw a shawl over her night-gown and ran down and let
herself out. By the time she reached the gate the boy was sauntering
down the road, whistling carelessly; but she saw that a letter had been
thrust between the slats and the crossbar of the gate. She took it out
and hastened back to her room.

The envelope bore her name, and inside was a leaf torn from a
pocket-diary.

DEAR CHARITY:

I can't go away like this. I am staying for a few days at Creston River.
Will you come down and meet me at Creston pool? I will wait for you till
evening.

IX

CHARITY sat before the mirror trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, with
much secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with a
drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like
the inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece.

She propped the square of looking-glass against Mr. Royall's black
leather Bible, steadying it in front with a white stone on which a view
of the Brooklyn Bridge was painted; and she sat before her reflection,
bending the brim this way and that, while Ally Hawes's pale face looked
over her shoulder like