“’Tis no shame to admit that one’s courage is not always high. No one lives always on the heights. I know something about those moments of childish cowardice you speak of; but there, I belong to the sex that is supposed to have the right to be cowardly--we are even driven to it. Courage brings reproach upon us, while the more we shrink and cower and quail and complain the more ‘womanly’ we are said to be. What a fine outlook for the human race! But as to your future. Now I am an astrologer and must draw your horoscope.” (This was accomplished by scratching several circles on the walk with the end of her parasol.) “There, the rings and dots and figures all mean tremendous things. I shall not weary you, however, by telling you the why and wherefore of everything. I shall stick to facts. Here goes: I see a journey by water which ends where the sun sets. You will meet disappointments and difficulties; will know privations and dangers, and also that most dreadful form of homesickness--the homesickness of one who has no home. But you will overcome all obstacles and be what is called successful; you will find your place and hold it. You will become bigger and stronger in body and in character, and you will _never come back here_.” “And the indescribable thing called Happiness; has it no place in my horoscope?” he asked, after a pause. “Is it not included in the thing called Success?” she answered. “Can the defeated be happy?” “On the whole your reading is not half bad, as the English say, when they want to compliment a thing, and I believe in it.” Yet he sighed as he spoke. The promised success was not alluring, meaning as it did, lifelong separation from the sun that warmed his life. Still he was in dead earnest when he said he believed in her prophecies. Long ago he had made up his mind that this girl was his fate--not in the sense that she was likely to unite her life to his. He had never been honestly hopeful of that in spite of his steady perseverance; but it seemed to him that in some way she was to direct his life, to be the star of his destiny, as it were. And never was that belief stronger upon him than now when he knew that the end of their daily association had come. Rising, she said, “Let us each cast a pebble in the pool of this fountain and see whose circles will last longer.” As they watched the rings widen, multiply and vanish until those made by her pebble had obliterated his, he said, “There! Your spirit will trouble the waters of life to greater purpose than mine and longer. It needs no divination to tell that.” When they went back to the house they met Westfield coming out. “Will she eventually throw herself away on him?” was the query Kendall put to himself. At the breakfast table next morning Kendall’s chair was vacant, and the place was to know him no more under the sun. CHAPTER III. CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS.