d to overtake you, but
you disappeared. I prowled around hoping to find you again; and I had my
new shoes on, too, and they hurt me."

The whimsical gaiety of the complaint took away Winifred's reserve, and
without attempting to explain her disappearance, she smiled a welcome,
though she soon fell silent under the burden of her heart.

Philip had called with a set purpose, yet he found no words as he sat
before the smouldering fire. He had time, waiting for the moment of
speech, to note the pathetic droop of her shoulders and the weariness of
her beautiful eyes. Evidently the courage and strength of the day had
been exhausted.

She played idly with a book, but laid it aside while she roused the
half-burned wood into a shower of sparks.

Philip reached and took up the book abstractedly, and carelessly turned
the leaves, wondering how he should say what was in his heart. A loose
paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. It was the newspaper
cutting that Winifred had saved, but had forgotten to copy, in the
stress of her anxieties.

Danvers was about to replace it when something familiar made him scan it
eagerly. Radiant with joy, he glanced at his companion, but Winifred
stood at the mantel with averted face. He took out his note-book, found
a little, old, yellow scrap, and held both slips in his hand as he rose.
He drew the girl to him, startled, resisting.

"Haven't we found each other?" he asked, simply, showing her the twin
copies of the legend, old, yet ever new. "This little clipping has been
close to my heart for years--waiting for you, dear. Won't you take its
place?"

Winifred was silent. She had guarded against all ordinary appeals, but
this--how could she answer him? To refuse this tender sympathy, this
yearning love, when she most needed it--the thought was bitterness!

Still silent she drew away from him, and lifted a face so drawn with
suffering that Danvers was startled at the change.

"You do not love me?" he questioned, more to himself than to the
shrinking woman. "You do not understand?"

He stood before her struggling with his disappointment--that she should
fail to understand--she who had always felt his thought so subtly; it
was this, almost as much as her lack of response to his love, that hurt
him.

They stood before each other, separated by a thing which the woman would
not put into words, and the man dared not question.

"Mr. Danvers--Philip," said the girl, gently, "I am sorry