nd I've got to do
something--" He forced a laugh. "The habit of work is incurable!"

Justine's face had grown as grave as his. She hesitated a moment,
looking down the street toward the angle of Madison Square, which was
visible from the corner where they stood.

"Will you walk back to the square with me? Then we can sit down a
moment."

She began to move as she spoke, and he walked beside her in silence till
they had gained the seat she pointed out. Her hansom trailed after them,
drawing up at the corner.

As Amherst sat down beside her, Justine turned to him with an air of
quiet resolution. "Mr. Amherst--will you let me ask you something? Is
this a sudden decision?"

"Yes. I decided yesterday."

"And Bessy----?"

His glance dropped for the first time, but Justine pressed her point.
"Bessy approves?"

"She--she will, I think--when she knows----"

"When she knows?" Her emotion sprang into her face. "When she knows?
Then she does not--yet?"

"No. The offer came suddenly. I must go at once."

"Without seeing her?" She cut him short with a quick commanding gesture.
"Mr. Amherst, you can't do this--you won't do it! You will not go away
without seeing Bessy!" she said.

Her eyes sought his and drew them upward, constraining them to meet the
full beam of her rebuking gaze.

"I must do what seems best under the circumstances," he answered
hesitatingly. "She will hear from me, of course; I shall write
today--and later----"

"Not later! _Now_--you will go back now to Lynbrook! Such things can't
be told in writing--if they must be said at all, they must be spoken.
Don't tell me that I don't understand--or that I'm meddling in what
doesn't concern me. I don't care a fig for that! I've always meddled in
what didn't concern me--I always shall, I suppose, till I die! And I
understand enough to know that Bessy is very unhappy--and that you're
the wiser and stronger of the two. I know what it's been to you to give
up your work--to feel yourself useless," she interrupted herself, with
softening eyes, "and I know how you've tried...I've watched you...but
Bessy has tried too; and even if you've both failed--if you've come to
the end of your resources--it's for you to face the fact, and help her
face it--not to run away from it like this!"

Amherst sat silent under the assault of her eloquence. He was conscious
of no instinctive resentment, no sense that she was, as she confessed,
meddling in matters which did not conc