nd you are friends.'

'Friends, yes,' Alvan replied, and praised the girl, as of course she
deserved to be praised for her open mind.

'We are friends!' he said, dropping a deep-chested breath. The title
this girl scornfully supplied was balm to the vanity she had stung, and
his burnt skin was too eager for a covering of any sort to examine
the mood of the giver. She had positively humbled him so far as with a
single word to relieve him; for he had seen bristling chapters in her
look at the photograph. Yet for all the natural sensitiveness of the
man's vanity, he did not seek to bury the subject at the cost of a
misconception injurious in the slightest degree to the sentiments he
entertained toward the older lady as well as the younger. 'Friends!
you are right; good friends; only you should know that it is just a
little--a trifle different. The fact is, I cannot kill the past, and I
would not. It would try me sharply to break the tie connecting us, were
it possible to break it. I am bound to her by gratitude. She is old now;
and were she twice that age, I should retain my feeling for her. You
raise your eyes, Clotilde! Well, when I was much younger I found this
lady in desperate ill-fortune, and she honoured me with her confidence.
Young man though I was, I defended her; I stopped at no measure to
defend her: against a powerful husband, remember--the most unscrupulous
of foes, who sought to rob her of every right she possessed. And what
I did then I again would do. I was vowed to her interests, to protect a
woman shamefully wronged; I did not stick at trifles, as you know;
you have read my speech in defence of myself before the court. By my
interpretation of the case, I was justified; but I estranged my family
and made the world my enemy. I gave my time and money, besides the
forfeit of reputation, to the case, and reasonably there was an
arrangement to repay me out of the estate reserved for her, so that
the baroness should not be under the degradation of feeling herself
indebted. You will not think that out of the way: men of the world do
not. As for matters of the heart between us, we're as far apart as the
Poles.'

He spoke hurriedly. He had said all that could be expected of him.

They were in a wood, walking through lines of spruce firs of deep golden
green in the yellow beams. One of these trees among its well-robed
fellows fronting them was all lichen-smitten. From the low sweeping
branches touching earth to