you, don't hurry back--you've been away for a whole year, remember. I'll
understand."

In spite of his cheerful words and matter-of-course manner, Austin stood
watching the train go out with a heavy heart. He was very sincere in
feeling that his presumption had been great, and that he had taken
advantage of feelings which mere youth and loneliness might have awakened
in Sylvia, and from which she would recover as soon as she was with her
own friends again. And yet he loved her so dearly that it was hard--even
though he acknowledged that it was best--to let her go back to the world
by whose standards he felt he fell short in every way.

"If I lose her," he said to himself, "I must remember that--of course I
ought to. King Cophetua and the beggar maid makes a very pretty
story--but it doesn't sound so well the other way around. And then she's
given me such a tremendous amount already--if I never get any more, I
must be thankful for that."

Sally spent a rapturous week in New York, and came home with her modest
trousseau all bought and glowing accounts of the good times she had had.

"The very first thing Sylvia did, the morning after we got there," she
said, "was to buy a new limousine and hire a man to run it. My, you ought
to see it! It's lined with pearl gray, and Sylvia keeps a gold vase with
orchids--fresh ones every day--in it! She helped me choose all my things,
and I never could have got half so much for my money, or had half such
pretty things if she hadn't; and she began right off to get the most
_elegant_ clothes for herself, too! I knew Sylvia was pretty, but I never
knew _how_ pretty until I saw her in a low-necked white dress! We went to
the theatre almost every evening, and saw all the sights, besides--it