ht it out yet. You
mustn't hurry me."

"No, no! Heaven forbid." He stood aside to let her pass.

"I was just going home," she added.

"May I go with you?"

"Yes, if you want to. I don't know but you betta; we might as well; I
want to talk with you. Don't you think it's something we ought to talk
about-sensibly?"

"Why, of course! And I shall try to be guided by you; I should always
submit to be ruled by you, if--"

"That's not what I mean, exactly. I don't want to do the ruling. You
don't undastand me."

"I'm afraid I don't," he assented, humbly.

"If you did, you wouldn't say that--so." He did not venture to make any
answer, and they walked on without speaking, till she asked, "Did you
know that Miss Milray was at the Middlemount?"

"Miss Milray! Of Florence?"

"With her brother. I didn't see him; Mrs. Milray is not he'a; they ah'
divo'ced. Miss Milray used to be very nice to me in Florence. She isn't
going back there any moa. She says you can't go back to anything. Do you
think we can?"

She had left moments between her incoherent sentences where he might
interrupt her if he would, but he waited for her question. "I hoped we
might; but perhaps--"

"No, no. We couldn't. We couldn't go back to that night when you threw
the slippas into the riva, no' to that time in Florence when we gave up,
no' to that day in Venice when I had to tell you that I ca'ed moa fo'
some one else. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see," he said, in quick revulsion from the hope he had
expressed. "The past is full of the pain and shame of my errors!"

"I don't want to go back to what's past, eitha," she reasoned, without
gainsaying him.

She stopped again, as if that were all, and he asked, "Then is that my
answer?"

"I don't believe that even in the otha wo'ld we shall want to go back to
the past, much, do you?" she pursued, thoughtfully.

Once Gregory would have answered confidently; he even now checked an
impulse to do so. "I don't know," he owned, meekly.

"I do like you, Mr. Gregory!" she relented, as if touched by his
meekness, to the confession. "You know I do--moa than I ever expected to
like anybody again. But it's not because I used to like you, or because
I think you always acted nicely. I think it was cruel of you, if you
ca'ed for me, to let me believe you didn't, afta that fust time. I can't
eva think it wasn't, no matta why you did it."

"It was atrocious. I can see that now."

"I say it, because I shouldn't ev