suffer.

He had not been contemptible in the offering of his love; his best
had come out at that moment; if it does not come out then,
somehow,--through face and tone, in some plain earnestness or simple
nobleness, if not in fashion of the spoken word as very well it may
not,--it must be small best that the man has in him.

Rosamond's simple saying of the truth, as it looked to her in that
moment of sure insight, was the best help she could have given him.
Truth is always the best help. He did not exactly understand the
wherefore, as she understood it; but the truth touched him
nevertheless, in the way that he could perceive. They did not
"belong" to each other.

And riding down in the late train that evening, Archie Mucklegrand
said to himself, drawing a long breath,--"It would have been an
awful tough little joke, after all, telling it to the old lady!"

"Are you too tired to walk home?" Kenneth Kincaid asked of Rosamond,
helping her put the baskets in the carriage.

Dakie Thayne had asked Ruth the same question five minutes before,
and they two had gone on already. Are girls ever too tired to walk
home after a picnic, when the best of the picnic is going to walk
home with them? Of course Rosamond was not too tired; and Mrs.
Holabird had the carryall quite to herself and her baskets.

They took the River Road, that was shady all the way, and sweet now
with the dropping scents of evening; it was a little longer, too, I