"But you have been busy?" she asked; "very busy, Bob, and oh, I've been so proud of all that you've done." It was the woman's tongue that first found a sincere word. The man replied, "Well--I--I am glad you have." It seemed to the woman a long time since her father had gone. Her conscience was making minutes out of seconds. She said, "Don't you think it's getting late?" but did not rise. The man looked at his watch and answered, "Only 10.34." He started to rise, but she checked him breathlessly. "Oh, Bob, Bob, sit down. This isn't enough for these long years. I had so many things to say to you." She hesitated and cried, "Why are we so stupid now--now when every second counts?" He bent slightly toward her and said in a low voice, "So that's why your lilacs have never bloomed again." She looked at her chair arm and asked, "Did you know they hadn't bloomed?" "Oh, Molly, of course I knew," he answered, and then went on: "Every thirteenth of April I have slipped through the fence and come over here, rain or shine, at night, to see if they were blooming. But I didn't know why they never bloomed!" The woman rose and walked a step toward the door, and turned her head away. When she spoke it was after a sob, "Bob, I couldn't bear it--I just couldn't bear it, Bob!" He groaned and put his hands to his forehead and rested his elbow on the chair arm. "Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly," he sighed, "poor, poor little Molly." After a pause he said: "I won't ever bother you again. It doesn't do any good." A silence followed in which the woman turned her face to him, tear-stained and wretched, with the seams of her heart all torn open and showing through it. "It only hurts," the man continued, and then he groaned aloud, "Oh, God, how it hurts!" She sank back into her chair and buried her face in the arm farthest from him and her body shook, but she did not speak. He stared at her dry-eyed for a minute, that tolled by so slowly that he rose at the end of it, fearful that his stay was indecorously long. "I think I should go now," he said, as he passed her. "Oh, no!" she cried. "Not yet, not just yet." She caught his arm and he stopped, as she stood beside him, trembling, haggard, staring at him out of dead, mad eyes. There was no colour in her blotched face, and in the moonlight the red rims of her eyes looked leaden, and her voice was unsteady. At times it broke in sobbing croaks, and she spoke with loose jaws, as one in great terror. "I want you to know--" she paused at the end of each little hiccoughed phrase--"that I have not forgotten--" she caught her breath--"that I think of you every day--" she wiped her eyes with a limp handkerchief--"every day and every night, and pray for you, though I don't believe--" she whimpered as she shuddered--"that God cares much about me."