sweetest friend for months and months, and he would rush back from Wales the moment he could break from his family, and seek solace in her arms—he would have got himself in hand again by then, so as not to do anything stupid. He always meant to be very, very good to her, though. Thus he dreamed, and grew more demonstrative, clasping her once again in a fond farewell embrace, during the last available moment, and his charming blue eyes, with their brown curly lashes, looked half full of tears. "Say you love me, darling," he commanded, wishing, like all lovers, to hear the spoken words. Katherine Bush was very pale, and there was concentrated[Pg 16] feeling in her face which startled him. Then she answered, her voice deeper than usual: [Pg 16] "Yes—I love you, Algy—perhaps you will never know how much. I do not suppose I will ever really love anyone else in the same way in my life." Then the train drew up at the station. The people all looked unreal in the foggy October air under the glaring lights—and the whole thing appeared as a dream indeed when, half an hour later, Katherine sped through the suburban roads to Bindon's Green, alone in the taxi. Lord Algy had put her in and paid the man liberally, and with many last love words had bidden her good-night and—au revoir! So this chapter was finished—she realised that. And it had been really worth while. An outlook had opened for her into a whole new world—where realities lived—where new beings moved, where new standpoints could be reached. She saw that her former life had been swept from her—and now, to look back upon, appeared an impossible tedium. She had mastered all the shades of what three days of most intimate companionship with a gentleman could mean, and the memory contained no flaw. Algy's chivalry and courtesy had never faltered; she might have been a princess or his bride, from the homage he had paid her. Dear, much-loved Algy! Her passion for him was tinged with almost a mother love—there was something so tender and open-hearted about him. But now she must take stern hold of herself, and must have pluck enough to profit by what she had learned of life—Though to-night she was too tired to do more than retrospect. Oh! the wonder of it all!—the wonder of love, and the wonder of emotion! She clenched her cold hands round the handle of her little valise. She was trembling.[Pg 17] She had insisted upon his keeping the
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