was that anything that belonged to her belonged to Stephen, and
the Waterman place was much nea'rer than the Wileys', particularly
at dinner-time!

When the boy had slouched away, Stephen sat under the apple tree,
now a mass of roseate bloom, and buried his face in his hands.

It was not precisely a love-letter that he had read, nevertheless
it blackened the light of the sun for him. Claude asked Rose to
meet him anywhere on the road to the station and to take a little
walk, as he was leaving that afternoon and could not bear to say
good-by to her in the presence of her grandmother. "Under the
circumstances," he wrote, deeply underlining the words, "I cannot
remain a moment longer in Edgewood, where I have been so happy
and so miserable!" He did not refer to the fact that the time
limit on his return-ticket expired that day, for his dramatic
instinct told him that such sordid matters have no place in
heroics.

Stephen sat motionless under the tree for an hour, deciding on
some plan of action.

He had work at the little house, but he did not dare go there
lest he should see the face of dead Love looking from the windows
of the pink bedroom; dead Love, cold, sad, merciless. His cheeks
burned as he thought of the marriage license and the gold ring
hidden away upstairs in the drawer of his shaving stand. What a
romantic fool he had been, to think he could hasten the glad day
by a single moment! What a piece of boyish folly it had been,
and how it shamed him in his own eyes! When train time drew near