f,
my pale darling."

"Don't worry about me, Father," she said, pulling up his furred collar;
"indeed, I am well and happy. If you could believe me, perhaps you would
love me as much as you used to."

"As much! My child, I never loved you better than now; remember that. I
think I have forgotten everybody else in you."

"Don't, dear! it makes me feel miserable to think I should cause you a
moment's uneasiness. Won't you believe that everything is as I wish it?"

"If I could, I should have to lose the memory of the last four months.
Well, try your best to forgive me, child."

"Unless you hate me, don't hurt me with that thought again. I forgive
you? I, who am the cause of it all?"

He kissed her tear-filled eyes tenderly, and turned with a sign to her
mother.

They watched to the last his loved face at the window, Ruth with a sad
smile and a loving wave of her handkerchief.

Over at the mole it is not a bad place to witness tragedies. Pathos
holds the upper hand, and the welcomes are sometimes as heart-rending as
the leave-takings. A woman stood on the ferry with a blank, working face
down which the tears fell heedlessly; a man, her husband, turned from
her, drew his hat down over his eyes, and stalked off toward the
train without a backward glance. Parting is a figure of death in this
respect,--that only those who are left need mourn; the others have
something new beyond.

Chapter XXI

The fire-light threw grotesque shadows on the walls. Ruth and Louis in
the library made no movement to ring for lights; it was quite cosey as
it was. They had both drawn near the crackling wood-blaze, Ruth in a low
rocker, Arnold in Mr. Levice's broad easy-chair.

"I surely thought you intended going to the concert this evening,
Louis," she said, looking across at him. "I fancy Mamma expected you to
accompany her."

"What! Voluntarily put myself into the cold when there is a fire blazing
right here? Ah, no. At any rate, your mother is all right with the
Lewises, and I am all right with you."

"I give you a guarantee I shall not bite; you look altogether too hard
for my cannibalistic propensities."

"It is something not to be accounted soft. I think a redundancy of flesh
overflows in trickling sentimentality. My worst enemy could not accuse
me of either fault."

"But your best friend would not mind a little thaw now and then. One of
the girls confided to me today that walking on and over-waxed floor was
nothing to a