at him, and away again. She knew that he was
silently regarding her. Quite without seeing she knew how his face
looked, the fine face with the eyes which seemed to see so much, the firm
yet sensitive mouth, the whole virile personality held in a powerful
restraint.

Then he opened the door for her, and she passed him. She looked back at
him from the threshold.

"Good-night," she said, and smiled.

"Good-night," he answered, and gave back the smile. Then he went quickly
down the path and away.

Ten minutes afterward she put out the light in the front room, and stole
out of the door, leaving it open behind her. Still in the white gown of
the evening, but with a long, dark cloak flung over it, she went swiftly
back over the paths to the garden bench. Arrived there she sat down upon
it, where she had sat before, but not as she had been. Instead, she
turned and laid her arm along the low back of the bench, and her head
upon it, and remained motionless in that position for a long time. Her
eyes were wide, in the darkness, and her lips were pressed tight
together, and once, just once, a smothered, struggling breath escaped
her. But, finally, she sat up, threw up her head, lifted both arms above
it, the hands clenched tight.

"Charlotte Ruston," she whispered fiercely, "you have to be strong--and
strong--and stronger yet! You have to be! _You have to be!_"

Then she rose quickly to her feet, with a motion not unlike that with
which John Leaver had sprung to his an hour before. It was a movement
which meant that emotion must yield to action. She went swiftly back to
the house, in at the door, up the straight, high stairs to her room.

As she lighted her candle a voice spoke from Madam Chase's room, its door
open into her own.

"Charlotte?"

"Yes, Granny?"

The girl went in, taking the candle, which she set upon the
dressing-table. She bent over the bed, putting her lips close to
the old lady's ear.

"Can't you sleep, dear?" she asked.

"Not until you are in, child. Why are you so late?"

"It's not late, Granny. You know I went to Dr. Burns's to dinner."

"It's very late," repeated the delicate old voice, slightly querulous,
because of its owner's failure to hear the explanation. "Much too late
for a girl like you. You should have had your beauty sleep long ago."

Charlotte smiled, feeling as if her twenty-six years had added another
ten to themselves since morning. She patted the soft cheek on the pillow,
and