t when Pitt would have taken Esther's hand,
she brushed past him and went out into the hall. Pitt followed, with
another bow to the colonel, and courteously shutting the door behind
him, wishing the work well over. Esther, however, made no fuss, hardly
any demonstration. She stood there in the hall and gave him her hand
silently, I might say coldly, for the hand was very cold, and her face
was white with suppressed feeling. Pitt grasped the hand and looked at
the face; hesitated; then opened his arms and took her into them and
kissed her. Was she not like a little sister? and was it possible to
let this heartache go without alleviation? No doubt if the colonel had
been present he would not have ventured such a breach of forms; but as
it was Pitt defied forms. He clasped the sorrowing little girl in his
arms and kissed her brow and her cheek and her lips.

'I'm coming back again,' said he. 'See that you have everything all
right for me when I come.'

Then he let her out of his arms and went off without another word. As
he went home, he was ready to smile and shake himself at the warmth of
demonstration into which he had been betrayed. He was not Esther's
brother, and had no particular right to show himself so affectionate.
The colonel would have been, he doubted, less than pleased, and it
would not have happened in his dignified presence. But Esther was a
child, Pitt said to himself, and a very tender child; and he could not
be sorry that he had shown her the feeling was not all on her side.
Perhaps it might comfort the child. It never occurred to him to
reproach himself with showing more than he felt, for he had no
occasion. The feeling he had given expression to was entirely genuine,
and possibly deeper than he knew, although he shook his head,
figuratively, at himself as he went home.

Esther, when the door closed upon Pitt, stood still for some minutes,
in the realization that now it was all over and he was gone. The hall
door was like a grim kind of barrier, behind which the light of her
life had disappeared. It remained so stolidly closed! Pitt's hand did
not open it again; the hand was already at a distance, and would maybe
never push that door open any more. He was gone, and the last day of
that summer vacation was over. The feeling absorbed Esther for a few
minutes and made her as still as a stone. It _did_ comfort her that he
had taken such a kindly leave of her, and at the same time it sealed
the sense of h