th the passionate
absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on
the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly
revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of
her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or
feeling.

He caught her hands with a laugh. "How do you suppose I found you?" he
said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished
them before her bewildered eyes.

"You dropped them, you imprudent young person--dropped them in the
middle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is running
the Gospel tent picked them up just as I was riding by." He drew back,
holding her at arm's length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the
minute searching gaze of his short-sighted eyes.

"Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren't
meant to," he said; and before she could answer he had kissed her again,
not vehemently, but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had guessed
her confused pain, and wanted her to know he understood it. He wound his
fingers through hers.

"Come let's walk a little. I want to talk to you. There's so much to
say."

He spoke with a boy's gaiety, carelessly and confidently, as if nothing
had happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in
the sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herself
yielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back along
the road by which she had come. She stiffened herself and stopped short.

"I won't go back," she said.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered gently:
"Very well: let's go the other way, then."

She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, and he went on:
"Isn't there a house up here somewhere--a little abandoned house--you
meant to show me some day?" Still she made no answer, and he continued,
in the same tone of tender reassurance: "Let us go there now and sit
down and talk quietly." He took one of the hands that hung by her side
and pressed his lips to the palm. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you
send me away? Do you suppose I don't understand?"

The little old house--its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly
gray--stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen,
but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house
was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small