"And you're a trifle ungallant," she accused, looking at him from under lowered lashes. "This is no time for gallantry. This is _business_." "What business?" she asked, tentatively approaching. "The business of living. The business of finding out what's going to happen to me--to _us_." "My goodness!" murmured Janice. "You talk almost like a soothsayer." "Come and hear what the astrologer has to say," urged Nelson, yet without his customary lightness of speech and look. He was still very serious. "I don't know," she said, slowly, hesitating in her approach. "I am almost afraid of you in this mood. Daddy says when a young man begins to act like he was really seriously grappling with life, look out for him!" "Your father is right. I am not to be trifled with, Miss Janice Day." "Why, Nelson! is something really wrong?" she asked him, and came a step nearer. "As far as my future is concerned," said he, quietly, "it seems to be quite all right." "Then the college----?" "I have a letter, too," he said, pulling it out of his pocket. This bait brought her to him. He thrust the letter into her hand, but he held onto that hand, too, and she could not easily pull away from him. "What--what is it, Nelson?" she asked, looking at him for only a moment, and then dropping her gaze before his intense look. "I've had a committee come to see me and look over my work at the Polktown School." [Illustration: She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his earnest ones. (See page 307.)] "Oh, Nelson!" "Now the secretary of the college faculty writes me the nicest kind of a letter. I've made good with them, Janice." "I--I'm so glad!" she murmured, eyes still down, and trying ever so faintly to wriggle her hand out of his. Suddenly Nelson Haley caught her other hand, too. He held them firmly and--for some reason--she just _had_ to raise her eyes and look straight into his earnest ones. "I've made good with them, Janice!" he cried--he almost shouted it. "But that's nothing--just nothing! The big thing with me now--the reward I want--is to hear you say that I've won out with you. Is it so, Janice--have I won out with _you_?" The long lashes screened the hazel eyes again. She looked on the one hand and on the other. There really seemed no escape, this greatly metamorphosed Nelson Haley was _so_ insistent. So she raised her lashes again and looked straight into his eyes. What she whispered the echo might have heard; and she nodded her head quickly, several times. * * * * * They came up through the grassy lane in the gloaming. Mrs. Beasely would be waiting supper for her boarder; but Nelson scouted the idea that he should not see Janice home first. Lights had begun to twinkle in the sitting-rooms of the various houses along the street. But there was a moon. Indeed, that was the excuse they had for remaining so late on the shore of the inlet. They had stopped to see it rise.