gone home happily with Sidney's friend Christine. Palmer would always know
how he stood with Christine. She would never talk about doing things, or
being things. Either she would marry Palmer or she would not. But Sidney
was not like that. A fellow did not even caress her easily. When he had
only kissed her arm--He trembled a little at the memory.

"I shall always want you," he said. "Only--you will never come back."

It had not occurred to either of them that this coming back, so tragically
considered, was dependent on an entirely problematical going away.
Nothing, that early summer night, seemed more unlikely than that Sidney
would ever be free to live her own life. The Street, stretching away to
the north and to the south in two lines of houses that seemed to meet in
the distance, hemmed her in. She had been born in the little brick house,
and, as she was of it, so it was of her. Her hands had smoothed and
painted the pine floors; her hands had put up the twine on which the
morning-glories in the yard covered the fences; had, indeed, with what
agonies of slacking lime and adding blueing, whitewashed the fence itself!

"She's capable," Aunt Harriet had grumblingly admitted, watching from her
sewing-machine Sidney's strong young arms at this humble spring task.

"She's wonderful!" her mother had said, as she bent over her hand work.
She was not strong enough to run the sewing-machine.

So Joe Drummond stood on the pavement and saw his dream of taking Sidney in
his arms fade into an indefinite futurity.

"I'm not going to give you up," he said doggedly. "When you come back,
I'll be waiting."