r tongs on the lid, he looked up: "Good God, Catharine! what is
it?"

"I wished to tell you--no, don't touch me, please--this is a mistake
which we have made, and it is better to let it go no farther. It ought
to end now."

"End? Now?" But he was not surprised. The pale face staring at her
over the half-emptied cup looked as if it had been waiting to hear
this; so that they began the subject, as it were, in the middle. So
much had already been said between them without words. He set the
cup down, even in that moment folding his napkin neatly with shaking
fingers. Kitty did not laugh. She never laughed at him afterward.
Something in that large, loose figure yonder, going away from her to
the woman he loved, had whetted her eyesight and her judgment. She saw
the man at last under Muller's weak finical ways, and the manly look
he gave her.

"You mean that there must be no--no marriage?"

"No. I'm very sorry. It has been my fault. But I thought--"

"You thought you loved me, and you do not. Don't cry, Kitty."

A long silence followed, which seemed to Catharine like that of death.
It was noticeable that he did not make a single effort to change her
resolution or to keep her. It seemed as if he must have been waiting
for her to waken some day and see the gulf between them.

"Don't cry, Kitty," he said again, under his breath. He stood by the
empty fireplace, resting his dainty foot on the fender and looking
down on it: he took out his handkerchief, shook out its folds and
wiped his face, which was hot and parched. Kitty was sorry, as she
said--sorry and scared, as though she had been called on to touch the
corpse of one dear to her friends, but whose death cost her nothing.
That she was breaking an obligation she had incurred voluntarily
troubled her very little.

"Yes, I thought you would say this one day," he said at last. "I think
you are right to take care of yourself. I was too old a man for you
to marry. But I would have done all I could. I have been very fond of
you," looking at her.

"Yes. You never seemed old to me sir."

"And your work for the poor children? I thought, dear, you felt that
the Lord called you to that?"

"So I did. But I don't think I feel it so much to-day." Catharine's
eyes were wide with this new terror. Was she, then, turning her back
on her God?

She was, after all, he thought, nothing but a frightened, beautiful
child.

"I should have been too rough for you," he said. How was h