cutting short the summer. One day, after breakfast, he sought out Mary
again in the garden. She was snipping Coreopsis for the dinner table,
but she did it absently, and Jerome noted the heaviness of her eyes.

"What's the trouble?" he asked, abruptly, and she was shaken out of her
late constraint. She looked up at him with a piteous smile.

"Nothing much," she said. "It doesn't matter. I suppose it's fate. He
has written his letter."

"Marshby?"

"You knew he got his appointment?"

"No; I saw something had him by the heels, but he's been still as a
fish."

"It came three days ago. He has decided not to take it. And it will
break his heart."

"It will break your heart," Wilmer opened his lips to say; but he dared
not jostle her mood of unconsidered frankness.

"I suppose I expected it," she went on. "I did expect it. Yet he's been
so different lately, it gave me a kind of hope."

Jerome started. "How has he been different?" he asked.

"More confident, less doubtful of himself. It's not anything he has
said. It's in his speech, his walk. He even carries his head