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Colin!” she exclaimed, sympathy putting an end to formality.

      “Thanks, Kitty. That’s the most comforting thing I’ve heard since I came home.”

      “Surely they weren’t hard on you.” Kitty’s social position was several steps down from that of Colin’s people, but behind her words lurked the suspicion, not based entirely on fancy, that the Haywards might have been very hard indeed on the youngest son and brother.

      “Oh, I daresay I deserved the dressing-down I got,” he returned. “You see my parents, brothers, and sisters take my failure as a sort of public affront. My brothers have been brilliant, and because two of them became a minister and a lawyer without any apparent trouble, my father can’t see why I have not become a doctor with equal ease and speed.”

      “But you never wanted to be a doctor.”

      “That is not the point, Kitty. I was expected to become one. Well, I’ve struggled through four professionals, but Providence—I’ve no doubt about its being Providence—says I’ve gone far enough for humanity’s sake.”

      “Do you mean that you are not going to try again?” she asked after a moment.

      “Exactly! And that has added to the trouble at home. I’m twenty-five, and I told them that I could not go on wasting more years at a thing I was plainly not adapted for. They insisted that I should go on, and I respectfully but firmly refused.” He paused.

      “Well, Colin?”—anxiously.

      “I don’t want you to imagine,” he said slowly, “that I’m thinking any evil of my people. I understand their feelings, their pride, and so on, well enough; but they don’t understand me one little bit. Well, I’m going to look for something to do that doesn’t require a university brain. To begin with, I’m going to London—”

      “London! Oh!”

      “Still hankering, Kitty?” he gently inquired.

      “Never mind me. Please tell me more—if you want to.”

      “There isn’t any more. If you are watching the train to-morrow night, you may see the last of me. I’ll be on the look out, anyway.”

      They had come to the gate leading to the main road, and by tacit agreement they halted.

      “But you haven’t quarrelled with your people, Colin?”

      He smiled queerly. “We don’t quarrel in our family—more’s the pity. We bottle it up, and of course that preserves the resentment. So, as far as I can see, we shall part politely, but I’m perfectly well aware that I needn’t trouble to come home again until I can prove that my way was the right one.” His tone changed suddenly. “But that’s enough—too much—about my affairs. Tell me something about yourself, Kitty.”

      She shook her head. “I must go; it’s almost ten, and—”

      “Let me come as far as the end of the little wood.”

      She hesitated and gave in. It was for the last time. “We must walk quickly, then,” she said.

      But their steps lagged in the darkness of the pines.

      “Do you still want to get away from Dunford?” he asked her. “Does the London train still call you?”

      “Oh, don’t speak about it! And please try to forget that I ever spoke about it. I’m a silly girl no longer.”

      “I never thought your ideas and ambitions silly, Kitty.”

      “You tried to discourage them,” she said quickly.

      “That was my selfishness. I didn’t want you to go away from Dunford. It may not be a very lively place, but it’s safe. Quite a number of people seem to find moderate happiness in the neighbourhood.”

      “The happiness of turnips!” she said fiercely, then laughed sadly. “Oh, that wasn’t fair of me,” she went on. “But, you know, before I came to live with my aunt and uncle here, I always looked forward to seeing the world and doing something in it, and my father encouraged me—but there’s no use in going over that again. Some day, perhaps, I’ll resign myself to selling postage stamps, and sending telegrams and—”

      “Are your uncle and aunt still set against your going elsewhere? Now that you’re of age they could hardly prevent—”

      “Please say no more, Colin. When you come back rich or famous, or both, you will find me here.”

      He could not check the words that rushed from his heart. “Kitty, if I could only hope that I might find you here—waiting.”

      She did not affect to misunderstand him.

      “You don’t really mean that,” she said quietly. “We are too good friends for that sort of thing. Yes, I believe we are good friends, although our friendship has not all been open and straightforward. But I’m glad we’ve had it, Colin, and I don’t want to be sorry afterwards.”

      “I never supposed you could love me,” he said sadly, “but since you allow the friendship, will you let me write to you? You’re the only friend I feel I want to write to while I’m trying to prove that my way is the right one.”

      She considered before she said, “I’d like to hear from you, but you must not write. It will only make trouble. And now I must say good-bye and—good luck.” She put out her hand.

      He held it, striving with himself. Then he said a little unsteadily, “I think you must know that I have cared for you all along, and because I may never see you again, will you—will you let me kiss you—once?”

      “But, Colin, you understand that I—I don’t love you?”

      “Too well!”

      She could just see that his face was white. She made an almost imperceptible movement, and it was not of refusal.

      A moment later he was gone.

      When the sound of his footsteps had ceased, Kitty stirred.

      “Am I crying?” she said to herself, and wiped her eyes. “Poor Colin, poor boy! I wonder if he will write, after all.” She started for home. “And I thought I had sort of got over the London longing,” she sighed.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      By taking the path through the wood she had cut off a wide curve of the main road. She was nearly home. Already the few remaining lights of the village bade her welcome back to dullness.

      “Five years!” she said to herself, “and I may live in it for fifty more.”

      Kitty Carstairs scarcely remembered her mother. She had been brought—or allowed to bring herself up—by her father, a Glasgow journalist of brilliant parts and erratic methods, a wretched manager of his worldly affairs, a delightful guest, an entertaining host, and altogether a very lovable fellow. Kitty adored him, and ignored his weaknesses and eccentricities. When he died after a long illness, she wished she might follow him quickly. He left a little money, and just enough debts to eat it up, five MSS. of novels, two collections of travel sketches, and a play—all in a more or less unfinished state—and a letter to Kitty’s only relatives, the brother and sister of his dead wife.

      Kitty never saw the contents of that letter; all she knew was that it seemed to procure her a home with John Corrie and his sister in the village of Dunford.

      For many years John Corrie had been postmaster as well as proprietor of a flourishing general store, the only shop of importance in the place. A canny man and a far-sighted was John Corrie, grasping but not exactly mean. If the villagers did not love him, they

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