Her face went down against her arms; she wanted to hide, even in the darkness, the flush that mantled her cheeks. She could see his eyes as they had seemed to caress her--out there in the orchard. Oh, why had she not told him the truth, then and there; if she had he would have despised her, but it would have killed forever the hope she had read in his face. Nancy, girlishly eager to struggle in life's tide, now, facing the greatest thing in life, shrank back, afraid. She wanted, oh so much, to be little again; there had always been someone, then, to whom to turn when problems pressed--Daddy, even Mrs. Finnegan--the Seniors in college, the Dean herself. Now--she felt alone. Lighting her lamp, she pulled a chair to the table and spread out sheets of paper. She wanted to tell it all, while her courage lasted. She wrote furiously, her lips pressed in a straight line. She would not spare herself one bit--Peter Hyde must know just what she had done. But, at the end, she yielded to a longing too strong to resist. "Please, _please_ don't think too badly of me. You see you don't know Anne and how her heart was set on going to Russia, and she was sure that if she told her relatives about going they'd stop her. And that seemed, then, the only important thing--neither of us thought of the wrong we'd be doing the people--here. It seemed, too, a very little thing for me to do for her. But I just can't bear to have _you_ hate me!" For a moment she held her pencil over the last words, then hastily sealed the letter and addressed it. The last paragraph stayed in her mind. "How _silly_ we were, Anne," she said aloud, mentally arraigning those two very young creatures of college days. Her confession made, a load rolled from Nancy's heart. "Anyway, he'll know the truth," was her soothing thought as she crawled into bed. In the morning she would tell Aunt Sabrina. But Nancy's first waking thought--at a very late hour, for her over-tired body had taken its due in sound sleep--was that she was very, very unhappy. As she dressed, with trembling haste, she wondered if she had not better plan to catch the afternoon train at North Hero. She sought out Jonathan first and despatched him with her letter, then walked slowly back into the house to face Aunt Sabrina. On the newel post of the stairs were letters that Jonathan had just brought up from the post-office. One was addressed to her in Anne's familiar handwriting and was postmarked New York! As though she had been struck, Nancy dropped down on the stairs. Anne's valiant spirit of sacrifice and service had given way to complaint.