ned suddenly upon
Hardy with half-closed, accusing eyes.

"You seem to be very happy with Lucy," she said, with an aggrieved
smile. "But why," she continued, with quickening animus, "why should
you seek to avoid me? Isn't it enough that I should come clear down
here to see you? But when I want to have a word with you after our
long silence I have to scheme and manage like a gypsy!"

She paused, and flicked her booted leg with the lash of a horsehair
quirt, glancing at him furtively with eyes that drooped with an
appealing sadness.

"If I had known how hard-hearted you could be," she said, after a
silence, "I should never have spoken as I did, if the words choked me.
But now that I have come part way and offered my poor friendship
again, you might--oh Rufus, how could you be so inconsiderate! No one
can ever know what I suffered when you left that way. Every one knew
we were the best of friends, and several people even knew that you had
been to see me. And then, without a word, without a sign, with no
explanation, to leave and be gone for years--think what they must
have thought! Oh, it was too humiliating!"

She paused again, and to Hardy's apprehensive eyes she seemed on the
verge of tears. So he spoke, blindly and without consideration, filled
with a man's anxiety to stave off this final catastrophe.

"I'm sorry," he began, though he had never meant to say it, "but--but
there was nothing else to do! You--you told me to go. You said you
never wanted to see me again, and--you were not very kind to me,
then." He paused, and at the memory of those last words of hers,
uttered long ago, the flush of shame mantled his cheeks.

"Every man has his limit," he said bluntly, "and I am no dog, to be
scolded and punished and sent away. I have been ashamed many times for
what I did, but I had to keep my own respect--and so I left. Is it too
much for a man to go away when he is told?"

Kitty Bonnair fixed him with her dark eyes and shook her head sadly.

"Ah, Rufus," she sighed, "when will you ever learn that a woman does
not always mean all she says? When you had made me so happy by your
tender consideration--for you could be considerate when you chose--I
said that I loved you; and I did, but not in the way you thought. I
did mean it at the moment, from my heart, but not for life--it was no
surrender, no promise--I just loved you for being so good and kind.
But when, taking advantage of what I said in a moment of weakness,