s talk," he said, eagerly.

Edith shook her head. "Too sleepy," she said, and ran upstairs. He
called after her, "Quitter!" But it provoked no retort, and he would
have gone back to walk up and down alone, by the primroses, and worry
over Jacky's future, if a melancholy voice had not come from the window
of their room: "Maurice.... It's twelve o'clock." And he followed Edith
indoors....

Edith had been sharply anxious to be by herself. She could not sit on
the porch with Maurice, and not burst out and tell him--what? Tell him
that nothing he had done could make the slightest difference to her! "He
has probably met some awfully nice girl and likes her--a good deal. As
for there being anything wrong, I don't believe it! That would be
horrible. I'm a beast to have thought of such a thing!" She decided to
put it out of her mind, and went to her desk, saying, "I'll straighten
out my accounts."

She began, resolutely; added up one column, and subtracted the total
from another; said: "Gosh! I'm out thirty dollars!" nibbled the end of
her pen, and reflected that she would have to work on her father's
sympathies;--then, suddenly, her pen still in her hand, she sat
motionless.

"Even if there _was_ anything--bad, I'd forgive him. He's a lamb!" But
as she spoke, childishness fell away--she was a deeply distressed woman.
Maurice was suffering. And she knew, in spite of her assertions to the
contrary, that it wasn't because of any slight thing; any "crush" on a
girl--nice or otherwise! He was suffering because he had done wrong--and
she couldn't tear downstairs and say: "Maurice, never mind! I love you
just as much; I don't care what you've done!" Why couldn't she say that?
Why couldn't she go now, and sit on the porch steps beside him, and
say--anything? She got up and began to walk about the room; her heart
was beating smotheringly. "Why shouldn't I tell him I love him so that
I'd forgive--_anything_? He knows I've always loved him!--next to father
and mother. Why can't I tell him so, now?" Then something in her breast,
beating like wings, made her know why she couldn't tell him!

"I love him; that's why."

After a while she said: "There's nothing wrong in it. I have a right to
love him! He'll never know. How funny that I never knew--until to-night!
Yet I've felt this way for ever so long. I think since that time at Fern
Hill, when he was so bothered and wouldn't tell me what was the matter."
Yes; it was strange that now, w