is
face away from Miss Betty. He was to remain in Rouen another week, and
join his regiment with Tom. None of the three appeared to notice his
coming more than dimly, and he sat with his face bowed in his hands, and
did not move.

Thus perhaps an hour passed, with only a sound of footsteps on the
gravel of the driveway, now and then, and a low murmur of voices in the
rear of the house where people came to ask after Crailey; and when the
door of the room where he lay was opened, the four watchers started as
at a loud explosion. It was Mrs. Bareaud and the old doctor, and they
closed the door again, softly, and came in to the others. They had left
Crailey alone with Fanchon and Tom Vanrevel, the two who loved him best.

The warm day beyond the windows became like Sunday, no voices sounded
from without in the noon hush, though sometimes a little group of people
would gather across the street to eye the house curiously and nod and
whisper. The strong, blue shadows of the veranda pillars stole slowly
across the white floor of the porch in a lessening slant, and finally
lay all in a line, as the tall clock in a corner of the library
asthmatically coughed the hour of noon. In this jarring discordance
there was something frightful to Miss Betty. She rose abruptly, and,
imperiously waving back Mrs. Tanberry, who would have detained her--for
there was in her face and manner the incipient wildness of control
overstrained to the breaking-point--she went hurriedly out of the room
and out of the house, to the old bench in the garden. There she sank
down, her face hidden in her arms; there on the spot where she had first
seen Crailey Gray.

From there, too, had risen the serenade of the man she had spurned and
insulted; and there she had come to worship the stars when Crailey
bade her look to them. And now the strange young teacher was paying the
bitter price for his fooleries--and who could doubt that the price was
a bitter one? To have the spirit so suddenly, cruelly riven from the
sprightly body that was, but a few hours ago, hale and alert, obedient
to every petty wish, could dance, run, and leap; to be forced with such
hideous precipitation to leave the warm breath of June and undergo the
lonely change, merging with the shadow; to be flung from the exquisite
and commonplace day of sunshine into the appalling adventure that should
not have been his for years--and hurled into it by what hand!--ah,
bitter, bitter price for a harl