“Dear heart,” said Jack, smoothing her cheek with his hand, “don’t believe everything you hear. You are not accustomed to the ways of these people. Down in your own home in Maryland people mean what they say; here they don’t. Smearly is all right. He was ‘talking through his hat,’ as the boys say at the club,—that’s all. You’d think, to hear him go on, that he was a sour, crabbed old curmudgeon, now, wouldn’t you? Well, you never were more mistaken in your life. Every penny he can save he gives to an old sister of his, who hasn’t seen a well day for years. That’s only his talk.” “But why does he speak that way, then? When people love as they ought to love, every time a disappointment in the other comes, it is just one more opportunity to help,—not a cause for ridicule. I love you that way, Jack; don’t you love me so?” and she looked up into his eyes. “I love you a million ways, you sweet girl,” and, with a rapid glance about him to see that no one was near, he slipped his arm about her and held her close to his breast. He felt himself lifted out of the atmosphere of romance in which he had lived for months. This gentle, shrinking Southern child whom he had loved and petted and smothered with roses, this tender, clinging girl who trusted him so implicitly, was no longer his sweetheart, but his helpmate. She had all at once become a woman,—strong, courageous, clear-minded, helpful, ready to lead him if need be. A new feeling rose in his heart and spread itself through every fibre of his being,—a feeling without which love is a plaything. It was reverence. * * * * * When Sanford reached his apartments Sam was waiting for him, as usual. The candles were lighted instead of the lamp. The windows of the balcony were wide open. “You need not wait, Sam; I’ll close the blinds,” he said, as he stepped out and sank into a chair. Long after Sam had gone he sat there without moving, his head bent, his forehead resting on his hand. He was trying to pick up the threads of his life again, to find the old pattern which had once guided him in his course, and to clear it from the tangle of lines that had suddenly twisted and confused him. For a long time he saw nothing but Kate’s eyes as they had met his own, with the possibilities which he had read in their depths. He tried to drive the picture from him; then baffled by its persistence he resolutely faced it; held it as it were in his hands, and, looking long and unflinchingly at it, summoned all his courage.