urned back and faced
him. He could not stand it, and bent quickly over the rugs and blankets.

"I don't know what to say, Gil." She moved closer to him. "I've had a
wonderful time--you know that. I want to thank you for it. You've been
awfully kind to us."

"Having you here is all the thanks I want," he answered. He had everything
snugly packed now.

"I'm glad we happened to meet again. Though it does seem strange, doesn't
it, that we should run across each other after all these years!"

He stood up straight. "All these years! You talk as if you were a hundred!"
And he tried to smile.

"I am--nearly," she laughed. "I'm twenty-four, you know."

"Really? It doesn't seem possible!"

"I was eighteen when you went away. And that's nearly six years ago. Time
flies, doesn't it?" She smiled at her bromidic remark, and sat down; but he
did not reply, "Gil," she said at last. He looked up. "Why didn't you come
to see me before I went away?"

"I don't know. I suppose--"

"You went away from Maine without my knowing--without even coming to say
good-bye. Was that fair, was that the thing for a man like you to do?"

How he wished she had not brought up these burning memories!

"I was broke, and I--" he managed to explain.

Lucia knew what he must be feeling now. She got up and went over to his
side; she did not dare place her hand in his. Never must there be again
that electric current between them. "But you're all right now, aren't you,
Gil?"

He seemed abstracted, suddenly lost in another world. "Huh?" he uttered.
Then, as if coming to himself, "Oh, my, yes! I'm doing splendidly now,
Lucia!"

"I'm so glad, Gil. But you haven't answered my question yet."

"About my not coming to say good-bye?"

She nodded.

"It was pride, I suppose," he went on.

"Very foolish pride. And life is so short. You hurt me a great deal."

"I'm sorry. What more can one say? If I--"

"I thought I had done something to offend you," she said, standing very
still, and looking far beyond him now, as though viewing their whole
unhappy past. "And it's worried me even until this very day. I didn't do
anything to offend you, did I, Gil?"

"You? You, Lucia?" he cried. "You couldn't do anything to offend me. Surely
you must know that." He said it as a man says such things to the one woman
he loves.

"It was only pride?" she was anxious to know again. "Because you were poor!
Gil! Did you think so little of me as that?" There was a half-sob