She stretched out her hand and touched mine appealingly. I took her
worn and wasted fingers in my own and pressed them sympathetically.

"My dear Miss Harland,"--I began.

"Oh, call me Catherine"--she interrupted--"I'm so tired of being
Miss Harland!"

"Well, Catherine, then,"--I said, smiling a little--"Surely you know
why I am contented and happy?"

"No, I do not,"--she said, with quick, almost querulous? eagerness--
"I don't understand it at all. You have none of the things that
please women. You don't seem to care about dress though you are
always well-gowned--you don't go to balls or theatres or race-
meetings,--you are a general favourite, yet you avoid society,--
you've never troubled yourself to take your chances of marriage,--
and so far as I know or have heard tell about you, you haven't even
a lover!"

My cheeks grew suddenly warm. A curious resentment awoke in me at
her words--had I indeed no lover? Surely I had!--one that I knew
well and had known for a long time,--one for whom I had guarded my
life sacredly as belonging to another as well as to myself,--a lover
who loved me beyond all power of human expression,--here the rush of
strange and inexplicable emotion in me was hurled back on my mind
with a shock of mingled terror and surprise from a dead wall of
stony fact,--it was true, of course, and Catherine Harland was
right--I had no lover. No man had ever loved me well enough to be
called by such a name. The flush cooled off my face,--the hurry of