d her words, "You are
good--good--good!" kept repeating themselves somewhere in the recesses
of his brain to the tune of an old song.

"Good!" he ejaculated. "God, if she only knew!"

He had stated to his mother at the outset of the walk that he had no
plans; but in reality his summer had been fairly well arranged before
his return, lacking only a few set dates to fill the time till October.
The party at Ravenel would be over in a fortnight, and then--the thought
of another woman who loved him and a certain husband yachting on the
Mediterranean crossed his mind for an instant with annoyance and a
little shame.

The girl on the hill had had a more disturbing effect than any one that
ever came into his life before. Looking down the vista of probable
events, he saw nothing but trouble for her if he remained at
Ravenel--saw it as reasonably and as logically as though he were
contemplating the temptation of another. An affair with the daughter of
his overseer, a very young person, was a manifest impossibility for him,
Francis Ravenel; his pride and such honor as he had where women were
concerned forbade it. But even as he reached this decision the voice of
gold came back to him:

"And the night for love was given--
Darling, come to me!"

How she could love a man! He recalled her gesture when she said: "I will
tell you everything"! The glance through the lashes--"I've a fancy for
my own way"! the forgetting of his presence for the song-singing and the
sunset, coming back to talk with him; a pleading child!

By the lake he paused, and, looking into the moonlit water, came to his
conclusions sanely enough. He would see her no more. There would be many
people for the next fortnight to occupy his time; the coming folks were
interesting. Anne Lennox would be there; the time would pass; he would
leave Ravenel; but as he dropped asleep a voice seemed to call to him
through the pines, and he knew he would not go.

The next morning before coffee he wrote to Dr. Johnston, the great
specialist in alcoholic diseases, urging him to come to Ravenel at his
earliest convenience. "There is a man to be helped," he wrote, "and
neither money nor brains are to be spared in the helping."

Through the breakfast the memory of Katrine was vividly with him. He
recalled, with the approval of an aristocrat in taste, the daintiness of
her movements, the delicacy of her hands as they lay open on the fence,
even her indifference to him, t