compensations, for the visions come down there as they don't here. You
know how I like to be with all of you; and it's home--but the depression
gets more than I can stand at times and I must go. You understand better
than the rest, I think, and I always count on you to help me off." As he
spoke he rested his head on his hands and looked across the table into
the fire. His eyes were somber and the strong lines in his face cut deep
with a grim melancholy.

Phoebe's frank eyes softened as they looked at him. They had grown up
together, friends in something of a like fortune and she understood him
with a frank comradeship that comforted them both and went far to the
distraction of young David Kildare who, as he said, trusted Andrew but
looked for every possible surprising maneuver in the conduct of Phoebe.
And because she understood Andrew Phoebe was silent for a time, tracing
the lines on his map with a pencil.

"Then you'll have to go," she said softly at last, "but don't stay so
long again." She glanced across at the top of the major's head which
showed a rampant white lock over the edge of his book. "We miss you; and
you owe it to some of us to come back oftener from now on."

"I always will," answered Andrew, quickly catching her meaning and
smiling with a responsive tenderness in a glance at the absorbed old
gentleman around the corner of the table. "It is harder to go this time
than ever, in a way; and yet the staying's worse. I'm giving myself until
spring, though I don't know why. I--"

Just then from the drawing-room beyond there came a crash of soft chords
on the piano and David's voice rose high and sweet across the rooms. He
had gone to the piano to sing for Caroline who never tired of his negro