if I was a man: so pretty! so pretty! She's just good for nothing, Del
is;--would let the kitchen fire go out, and wouldn't mend the baby's
aprons; but I'd love her all the same; marry her, probably, and be sorry
all my life."

Pretty Del! Poor Del! Asenath wondered whether she wished that she were
like her; she could not quite make out; it would be pleasant to sit on
a log and look like that; it would be more pleasant to be watched as Del
was watched just now; it struck her suddenly that Dick had never looked
like this at her.

The hum of their voices ceased while she stood there with her eyes upon
them; Del turned her head away with a sudden movement, and the young man
left her, apparently without bow or farewell, sprang up the bank at a
bound, and crushed the undergrowth with quick, uneasy strides.

Asenath, with some vague idea that it would not be honorable to see his
face,--poor fellow!--shrank back into the aspens and the shadow.

He towered tall in the twilight as he passed her, and a dull, umber
gleam, the last of the sunset, struck him from the west.

Struck it out into her sight,--the haggard struggling face,--Richard
Cross's face.

Of course you knew it from the beginning, but remember that the girl did
not. She might have known it, perhaps, but she had not.

Asenath stood up, sat down again.