here else?"

Her hand was on the desk; his own slipped over until it closed on it.

"You are a little heroine," he murmured.

"No, I'm not. I'm a little fool to tell you this, but how can I
stay--why should I stay--when you are gone?"

She was looking down, but after her confession she raised her eyes to
his, and he wondered that he had never known how beautiful she was.
He could have taken her in his arms, but something, with the power of
invisible chains, held him back. In that supreme moment a vision swam
before him; a vision of a mountain stream backed by tawny foothills,
and a girl as beautiful as even this Phyllis who had wrapped him in her
arms... and said, "We must go and forget." And he had not forgotten....

When he did not respond she drew herself slowly away. "You will hate
me," she said.

"That is impossible," he corrected, quickly. "I am very sorry if I
have let you think more than I intended. I care for you very, very much
indeed. I care for you so much that I will not let you think I care for
you more. Can you understand that?"

"Yes. You like me, but you love someone else."

He was disconcerted by her intuition and the terse frankness with which
she stated the case.

"I will take you into my confidence, Phyllis, if I may," he said at
length. "I DO like you; I DID love someone else. And that old attachment
is still so strong that it would be hardly fair--it would be hardly
fair--"

"Why didn't you marry her?" she demanded.

"Because some one else did."

"Oh!"

Her hands found his this time. "I'm sorry," she said. "Sorry I
brought this up--sorry I raised these memories. But now you--who have
known--will know--"

"I know--I know," he murmured, raising her fingers to his lips....

"Time, they say, is a healer of all wounds. Perhaps--"

"No. It is better that you should forget. Only, I shall see you off; I
shall wave my handkerchief to YOU; I shall smile on YOU in the crowd.
Then--you will forget."...

CHAPTER XIV

Four years of war add only four years to the life of a man according
to the record in the family Bible, if he happen to spring from stock
in which that sacred document is preserved. But four years of war add
twenty years to the grey matter behind the eyes--eyes which learn to
dream and ponder strangely, and sometimes to shine with a hardness that
has no part with youth. When Captain Grant and Sergeant Linder stepped
off the train at Grant's old city there was, however