rpose to speak to her. Pretending to fumble at
the lock of the gate, he hung back until she was well in front.

Later on, the pair had encountered in a shop. She had put out a hand to
him, and he had taken it. But there had been hesitation, almost
reluctance, on his part, and it seemed to her that he had looked at her
with intolerable reproach in his eyes.

She was haunted by the remembrance. Was it possible that his wife's
death could have been really a grief to him? Such a grief as that? Or
was the lonely life he was leading, coming upon the shock of finding
the woman dead, telling upon him physically and mentally?

"Go and ask Mr Kilbourne in to supper to-night!" she commanded her
brother. She lived with him in another little bow-windowed house, with
a purple clematis over the bow-window, a crimson rambler over the door,
and about it the same air of sweetness, of neatness, of wholesomeness
its mistress wore. "He is looking ill and wretched. Try to bring him
in."

"I have asked him every day of my life. He won't come," the brother
said. "He gets out of my way when he can," he added. "He does not seem
to wish to be friendly any more."

She looked at him in silence, considering the statement. Kilbourne's
punctiliousness was exaggerated, but she thought she understood it. It
was delicacy carried to an extreme, perhaps, but she was proud to think
it was characteristic of him.

"I don't see why he need be afraid of being civil to me, for all that,"
the brother said, almost as if she had spoken.

The next time Kate Grantley had an opportunity of looking in
Kilbourne's face she was painfully struck by his appearance. The man
was thinner, more worn, years older. His head seemed to droop beneath a
heavier burthen than of yore; he walked as if his feet were shod with
lead.

Several months, in which she had had no word with him, had gone by
since his wife's death. At this rate, before he dared to stretch out a
hand to gather for himself the happiness ready to bloom for him, he
would be dead! She thought she saw that the man, lonely, sensitive, to
a fault, was passing his days in brooding melancholy, in unmerited
self-reproach. He had had more than enough of sadness in his life. For
an idea, a stupid convention of other folks' manufacture, and not worth
respecting, he should have no more. He should not be allowed to take
his own path, to push her on one side again.

Once resolved on any course, she was a very practical