s feelings towards the girl. It was
quite because he was not sure of his feeling that he could not be sure
he was not acting falsely and cruelly.

The fear grew upon him through the summer, which he spent in the heat
and stress of the town. In his work he could forget a little the despair
in which he lived; but in a double consciousness like that of the
hypochondriac, the girl whom it seemed to him he had deserted was
visibly and audibly present with him. Her voice was always in his inner
ear, and it visualized her looks and movements to his inner eye.

Now he saw and understood at last that what his heart had more than once
misgiven him might be the truth, and that though she had sent back his
letters, and asked her own in return, it was not necessarily her wish
that he should obey her request. It might very well have been an
experiment of his feeling towards her, a mute quest of the impression
she had made upon him, a test of his will and purpose, an overture to a
clearer and truer understanding between them. This misgiving became a
conviction from which he could not escape.

He believed too late that he had made a mistake, that he had thrown away
the supreme chance of his life. But was it too late? When he could bear
it no longer, he began to deny that it was too late. He denied it even
to the pathetic presence which haunted him, and in which the magic of
her voice itself was merged at last, so that he saw her more than he
heard her. He overbore her weak will with his stronger will, and set
himself strenuously to protest to her real presence what he now always
said to her phantom. When his partner came back from his vacation,
Langbourne told him that he was going to take a day or two off.

XII.

He arrived at Upper Ashton Falls long enough before the early autumnal
dusk to note that the crimson buds of the maples were now their crimson
leaves, but he kept as close to the past as he could by not going to
find Barbara before the hour of the evening when he had turned from her
gate without daring to see her. It was a soft October evening now, as it
was a soft May evening then; and there was a mystical hint of unity in
the like feel of the dull, mild air. Again voices were coming out of the
open doors and windows of the house, and they were the same voices that
he had last heard there.

He knocked, and after a moment of startled hush within Juliet Bingham
came to the door. "Why, Mr. Langbourne!" she screamed.