alk with me.

"I want to be alone," I said angrily, moving away from him.

"No, Pauline," he answered with a sigh, as he turned from me, "you do
not want to be alone."

Full of shame and anger, and jarred with the shock and fear, I went on
more slowly. The wood was so silent--the river through the trees lay so
still and leaden. If it had not been for the fire burning in my heart, I
could have thought the world was dead.

There was not a sound but my own steps; should I soon meet him, would he
be sitting in his old seat by the boat-house door, or would he be
wandering along the dead, still river-bank? What should I say to him? O!
he would speak. If he saw me he would have to speak.

I soon forgot that I had met Richard, that I had been angry; and again
I had but this one thought.

The pine cones were slippery under my feet. I held by the old trees as I
went down the bank, step by step. I had to turn and pass a clump of
trees before I reached the boat-house door.

I was there! With a beating heart I stepped up on the threshold. There
were two doors, one that opened on the path, one that opened on the
river. The house was empty. I had a little sinking pang of
disappointment, but I passed on to the door looking out on the river. By
this door was a seat, empty, but on this lay a book and a straw hat. I
could feel the hot blushes cover my face, my neck, as I caught sight of
these. I stooped down, feeling guilty, and took up the book. It was a
book which he had read daily to me in our lesson-hours. It had his name
on the blank page, and was full of his pencil-marks. I meant to ask him
to give me this book; I would rather have it than anything the world
held, when I should be parted from him. _When!_ I sat down on the seat
beside the door, with the book lying in my lap, the straw hat on the
bench. I longed to take it in my hands--to wreathe it with the clematis
that grew about the door, as I had done one foolish, happy afternoon,
not three weeks ago. But with a strange inconsistency, I dared not
touch it; my face grew hot with blushes as I thought of it.

How should I meet him? Now that the moment I had longed for had arrived,
I wondered that I had dared to long for it. I felt that if I heard his
step, I should fly and hide myself from him. The recollection of that
last interview in the library--which I had lived over and over, nights
and days, incessantly, since then, came back with fresh force, fresh
vehemence. But n