After an instant the manner of the two young men became more serious, and March showed a yellow paper--"a telegram," thought their on-looker. "He's coming here, no doubt; possibly to tell me its news; more likely just to say good-by again; but certainly with nothing--nothing--O nothing! to ask." For a moment her hand pressed hard against her lips, and then her maiden self-regard quietly but strenuously definitely rebelled. The telegram seemed to bring its readers grave disappointment. March made indignant gestures in obvious allusion to distant absentees. Now they began to move apart; Fair stepped farther away, March drew nearer the house, still making gestures as if he might be saying--Barbara resentfully guessed---- "You might walk slow; I shan't stop more than a minute!" She left the window with silent speed, saying, in her heart, "You needn't! You shan't!" As March with clouded brow was lifting his hand toward a tortuous brass knocker the door opened and Barbara, carrying a book and pencil in one hand, while the other held down her hat-brim, tripped across the doorstep. The cloud vanished. "Miss Barb--good-morning!" "O!--Mr.--March." Her manner so lacked both surprise and pleasure that he colored. He had counted on a sweet Southern handshake, but she kept hold of the hat-brim, let her dry smile of inquiry fade into a formal deference, and took comfort in his disconcertion. "I was just coming," he said, "I--thought you'd let me come back just to say good-by--but I see you're on your way to a recitation--I--" Her smile was cruel. "Why, my recitations are not so serious as that," she drawled. "Just to say good-by ought not to con-sti-tute any se-ri-ous de-ten-tion." John's heart sank like a stone. Scarcely could he believe his senses. Yet this was she; that new queen of his ambitions whose heavenly friendship had lifted first love--boy love--from its grave and clad it in the shining white of humility and abnegation to worship her sweet dignity, purity, and tenderness, asking for nothing, not even for hope, in return. This was she who at every new encounter had opened to him a higher revelation of woman's worth and loveliness than the world had ever shown him; she to whom he had been writing letters half last night and all this morning, tearing each to bits before he had finished it because he could see no life ahead which an unselfish love could ask her to live, and as he rent the result of each fresh effort hearing the voice of his father saying to him as in childhood days, "I'd be proud faw you to have the kitt'n, son, but, you know, she wouldn't suit yo' dear motheh's high-strung natu'e. You couldn't ever be happy with anything that was a constant tawment to her, could you?"