They were now in the lower hall, and near the door. “Florida,” said Ferris, abruptly, “I’m poor and disabled; I’ve no more right than any sick beggar in the street to say it to you; but I loved you, I must always love you. I--Good-by!” She halted him again, and “You said,” she grieved, “that you doubted me; you said that I had made your life a”-- “Yes, I said that; I know it,” answered Ferris. “You thought I could be such a false and cruel girl as that!” “Yes, yes: I thought it all, God help me!” “When I was only sorry for him, when it was you that I”-- “Oh, I know it,” answered Ferris in a heartsick, hopeless voice. “He knew it, too. He told me so the day before he died.” “And didn’t you believe him?” Ferris could not answer. “Do you believe him now?” “I believe anything you tell me. When I look at you, I can’t believe I ever doubted you.” “Why?” “Because--because--I love you.” “Oh! That’s no reason.” “I know it; but I’m used to being without a reason.” Florida looked gravely at his penitent face, and a brave red color mantled her own, while she advanced an unanswerable argument: “Then what are you going away for?” The world seemed to melt and float away from between them. It returned and solidified at the sound of the janitor’s steps as he came towards them on his round through the empty building. Ferris caught her hand; she leaned heavily upon his arm as they walked out into the street. It was all they could do at the moment except to look into each other’s faces, and walk swiftly on. At last, after how long a time he did not know, Ferris cried: “Where are we going, Florida?” “Why, I don’t know!” she replied. “I’m stopping with those friends of ours at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. We _were_ going on to Providence to-morrow. We landed yesterday; and we stayed to do some shopping”-- “And may I ask why you happened to give your first moments in America to the fine arts?” “The fine arts? Oh! I thought I might find something of yours, there!” At the hotel she presented him to her party as a friend whom her mother and she had known in Italy; and then went to lay aside her hat. The Providence people received him with the easy, half-southern warmth of manner which seems to have floated northward as far as their city on the Gulf Stream bathing the Rhode Island shores. The matron of the party had, before Florida came back, an outline history of their acquaintance, which she evolved from him with so much tact that he was not conscious of parting with information; and she divined indefinitely more when she saw them together again. She was charming; but to Ferris’s thinking she had a fault, she kept him too much from Florida, though she talked of nothing else, and at the last she was discreetly merciful. “Do you think,” whispered Florida, very close against his face, when they parted, “that I’ll have a bad temper?” “I hope you will--or I shall be killed with kindness,” he replied.