gloved hands out over it as if to warm them.

How absurdly happy she used to make him, and how light-hearted she had
been! He determined suddenly and sentimentally to go to that secret
place now, and bury the engagement ring she had handed back to him
under that bush as he had buried his hopes of happiness, and he
pictured how some day when he was dead she would read of this in his
will, and go and dig up the ring, and remember and forgive him. He
struck off from the walk across the turf straight toward this dell,
taking the ring from his waistcoat pocket and clinching it in his
hand. He was walking quickly with rapt interest in this idea of
abnegation when he noticed, unconsciously at first and then with a
start, the familiar outlines and colors of her brougham drawn up in
the drive not twenty yards from their old meeting-place. He could not
be mistaken; he knew the horses well enough, and there was old Wallis
on the box and young Wallis on the path.

He stopped breathlessly, and then tipped on cautiously, keeping the
encircling line of bushes between him and the carriage. And then he
saw through the leaves that there was some one in the place, and that
it was she. He stopped, confused and amazed. He could not comprehend
it. She must have driven to the place immediately on his departure.
But why? And why to that place of all others?

He parted the bushes with his hands, and saw her lovely and sweet-
looking as she had always been, standing under the box bush beside the
bench, and breaking off one of the green branches. The branch parted
and the stem flew back to its place again, leaving a green sprig in
her hand. She turned at that moment directly toward him, and he could
see from his hiding-place how she lifted the leaves to her lips, and