a furious whisper, each
indignant word a missile. "How dare you! How dare you speak to me like
that?"

"What!" said Pringle, peering. "What! Stella Vorhis! I can hardly
believe it!"

"But it's oh-so-true!" said Stella, rising. "Let's go--we can't talk
here."

"That was one awful break I made. I most sincerely and humbly beg your
pardon," Pringle said on the sidewalk.

Stella laughed.

"That's all right--I understand--forget it! You hadn't looked at me.
But I knew you when you first came in--only I wasn't sure till the
lights were turned on. Of course it would be great fun to tease
you--pretend to be shocked and dreadfully angry, and all that--but
I haven't got time. And oh, John Wesley, I'm so delighted to see you
again! Let's go over to the park. Not but what I was dreadfully angry,
sure enough, until I had a second to think. Why don't you say you're
glad to see me--after five years?"

"Stella! You know I am. Six years, please. But I thought you were
still in Prescott?"

"We came here three years ago. Here's a bench. Now tell it to me!"

But Pringle stood beside and looked down at her without speech, with
a smile unexpected from a face so lean, so brown, so year-bitten and
iron-hard--a smile which happily changed that face, and softened it.

The girl's eyes danced at him.

"I'm so glad you've come, John Wesley! Good old Wes!"

"So I am--both those little things. Six years!" he said slowly. "Dear
me--dear both of us! That will make you twenty-five. You don't look a
day over twenty-four! But you're still Stella Vorhis?"

She met his gaze gravely; then her lids drooped and a wave of red
flushed her face.

"I am Stella Vorhis--yet."

"Meaning--for a little while yet?"

"Meaning, for a little while yet. That will come later, John Wesley.
Oh, I'll tell you, but not just now. You tell about John Wesley,
first--and remember, anything you say may be used against you. Where
have you been? Were you dead? Why didn't you write? Has the world
used you well? Sit down, Mr. John Wesley Also-Ran Pringle, and give an
account of yourself!"

He sat beside her: she laid her hand across his gnarled brown fingers
with an unconscious caress.

"It's good to see you, old-timer! Begin now--I, John Wesley Pringle,
am come from going to and fro upon the earth and from walking up and
down in it. But I didn't ask you where you were living. Perhaps you
have a--home of your own now."

John Wesley firmly lifted her slim fingers