tired--"

"Have you ever?"

"Not yet. You always look--you always look--"

"How?"

"Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about
something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into
people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that
look--and I'd never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety
might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite
understand why it should be, either." He smiled quizzically, looking
down upon her. "Mary, you haven't a 'secret sorrow,' have you?"

For answer she only laughed.

"No," he said; "I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think
that's why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in
your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to
happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours
when I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel
dismal every time it comes--and then, when I've left the house, there's
a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily
dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really
beginning another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But
now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and so--good night." And
he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, "I hate
it!"

"Do you?" she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.

"Mary! Your eyes are so--" He stopped.

"Yes?" But she looked quickly away.

"I don't know," he said. "I thought just then--"

"What did you think?"

"I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
understand--and didn't."

She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. "My eyes are
pleased," she said. "I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go."

"But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it," he
said.

She inclined her head. "Yes. I'll--'let it'!"

"Going to church," said Bibbs. "It IS going to church when I go with
you!"

She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever
speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the
doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and
looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to
the New House, and looked back ag