Yet she kept all this to herself. It was her place to encourage, not discourage. If unbounded faith in Tom could help work the wonder of carrying him safely through his mission and home again to her, then she would bestow that faith ungrudgingly. Hers was too fine and steadfast a nature to quail at the first obstacle that rose to impede her highway of happiness. "Loyalheart" she had been christened and "Loyalheart" she would remain to the end of her days. "When must you go, Tom?" she questioned at last. Both had thus far been sedulously side-stepping direct reference to their moment of parting. "I ought to go this afternoon." Tom's voice registered his hearty regret as he made this response. "I can wait until to-morrow if _you_ say so, Grace. I'd rather you'd decide it. Of course, you know I'd prefer to put over going until to-morrow. It's only----" "I understand," came faintly from Grace. "You'd better go to-day. Tom. It will be even harder for both of us to wait another day before saying good-bye. Besides," she added, making a valiant effort to be cheerful, "the sooner you go, the sooner you will return. You may find that you won't have to stay there as long as you imagine." "You're a true comrade, Loyalheart." Since the day when Grace had named their future residence Haven Home, at the same time telling Tom of the college play in which she had taken part, he had fallen into the habit of calling her Loyalheart. "That Miss West had the right idea about you," had been his tender criticism. "There isn't another name in the whole world that could possibly suit you so well." "I hope always to be a good comrade," returned Grace, a faint color stealing into her lately-paling cheeks. "It's a pretty hard contract always to live up to, though. While everything is lovely, it's not hard. When things go wrong, it is. It reminds me of a poem I once read that began, 'It's easy enough to be pleasant when life flows by like a song.' I can't remember any more of it, except that it conveyed the thought that the only persons who are really worth while are the ones who can keep on being pleasant even when everything in their lives goes wrong. So we ought to try to smile over this little hardship and look at it as being just one of the vicissitudes that life is bound to bring us." "But I don't like to see hardship and vicissitudes creeping into our Golden Summer," protested Tom, not quite satisfied to adjust himself to Grace's more optimistic view of the situation. "I'm selfish about it, I'm afraid. When, after a long dark winter, a man is suddenly turned loose in the sunshine, he is naturally anxious to stay there. Just because I'm saying that, I don't mean that I would dream of failing Aunt Rose. I'd go even if it meant we'd have to put off our marriage a few weeks longer."