lift his cap; but he was bareheaded. He laughed
again; turned, and passed out.

"Boy! Boy! Come back," said Christobel. But the door had closed on
the first word.

She stood alone.

This time she did not wait. Where was the good of waiting?

She turned and walked slowly up the lawn, pausing to look at the
flowers in the border. The yellow roses still looked golden. The
jolly little "what-d'-you-call-'ems" lifted pale purple faces to the
sky.

But the Boy was gone.

She reached her chair, where he had placed it, deep in the shade of the
mulberry-tree. She felt tired; worn-out; old.

The Boy was gone.

She leaned back with closed eyes. She had hurt him so. She remembered
all the glad, sweet confident things he had said each day. Now she had
hurt him so.... What radiant faith, in love and in life, had been his.
But she had spoiled that faith, and dimmed that brightness.

Suddenly she remembered his dead mother's prayer for him. "_I have
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not_." And under those words she
had written "_Christobel_." Would he want to obliterate that name?
No, she knew he would not. Nothing approaching a hard or a bitter
thought could ever find a place in his heart. It would always be the
golden heart of her little Boy Blue.

Tears forced their way beneath her closed lashes, and rolled slowly
down her cheeks.

"Oh, Boy dear," she said aloud, "I love you so--I love you so!"

"I know you do, dear," he said. "It's almost unbelievable--yet I know
you do."

She opened her eyes. The Boy had come back. She had not heard his
light step, on the springy turf. He knelt in his favourite place, on
the left of her chair, and bent over her. Once more his face was
radiant. His faith had not failed.

She looked up into his shining eyes, and the joy in her own heart made
her dizzy.

"Boy dear," she whispered, "not my lips, because--I am not altogether
yours--I may have to--you know?--the Professor. But, oh Boy, I can't
help it! I'm afraid I care terribly."

He was quite silent; yet it seemed to her that he had shouted. A burst
of trumpet-triumph seemed to fill the air.

He bent lower. "Of course I wouldn't, Christobel," he said; "not
before the seventh day. But there's a lot beside lips, and it's all so
dear."

Then she felt the Boy's kisses on her hair, on her brow, on her eyes.
"Dear eyes," he said, "shedding tears for my pain. Ah, dear eyes!"
And he kissed them again.