e to
suspect the heights from which she had looked down on his softness and
flippancy?

She observed that he said not a word of the preparations he had made,
the house furnished, the expectant congregation, or the storm of
gossip and scandal which would follow him as a jilted lover. Was the
real wound, then, so deep? Or did he overlook such trifles, as men do?

"I did not forget the new dresses and underclothes," thought Kitty,
mean and mortified.

He roused himself as Jane came in: "No, Jane, no more tea. Yes, that
is my cup on the mantel-shelf."

"Dah's a gen'leman, Miss Kitty. I took him in the Book-shop. 'T mought
be Spellissy 'bout de oats. Tink it is Spellissy."

"You had better go, Catharine," taking up his hat.

"It is not important." The door closed after Jane. She came close to
him, irresolute. What could she say? She thought, with the heat of
childishness, that she would give the blood out of her body, drop by
drop, to comfort him. She wished that she had gone on and married him.
"But I cannot say that I love him." This was a matter for life and
death--even Kitty's polite soul recognized that--and not for a civil
lie.

Again the man asserted himself before the woman: "No, there is nothing
for you to say, Catharine," smiling. "There are some things it is
better not to varnish over with words." He took up his hat after a
pause, and turned a feeble, uncertain face to the window: "I--I might
as well go now: I have a prayer-meeting this afternoon."

"And when you go you mean never to come back again?" cried Kitty, pale
and red in a moment. "That's to be the end of it all?"

"What more can there be? It's all said." Yet after he had walked to
the door he stood on the steps, looking about the room which had grown
so familiar and dear to him. At Kitty he did not look.

"Will you have a rose?" breaking one hastily from the trailing
branches at the window. "To remember the old Book-shop." She had never
given him anything before.

He threw it down: "I do not need a rose to make me remember,"
bitterly. "It _is_ all said, child? You have nothing to tell me?"
looking furtively at her.

For a long time she did not speak: "No, nothing."

"Good-bye, Kitty."

Kitty did not answer him. The tears ran hot and salt over her round
cheeks as she watched the little man disappear through the walnuts.
She went up stairs, and, still crying, chose one or two maudlin
sonnets and a lock of black hair as mementoes to keep