"Not exactly," he answered, grimly. "Good-bye!" she cried, dropping down the river-bank to the skiff. "Katrine!" he called. "I'm not coming back!" she cried through the bushes. "I'm never coming back! Good-bye!" Two days later there came from Ravenel House a polite note, cordial by the book, asking that Miss Dulany come to them for dinner on the fifth; and, it added, perhaps Miss Dulany might give them an opportunity to hear her charming voice. It was written in the quaint, old-fashioned hand of Mrs. Ravenel. Katrine read it with a curious smile around her lips, answering while the messenger waited. She "regretted extremely that a cold"; she paused a minute in the writing to reflect on the way the cold had come; sitting one damp afternoon in the rose-garden with the son of the writer of this extremely polite invitation; "regretted extremely that this cold, which seemed more persistent than such things generally were, prevented her accepting Mrs. Ravenel's most kind invitation." The third meeting was an intentional one on Frank's part. The people at Ravenel had become unbearable, and with no thought save for Katrine's society, he took a short cut through the laurel trees, crossed the river in his canoe, and entered the lodge garden to find her sitting on the broad steps of the house, her chin resting in her hands. There was an exaltation in her little being, an alluring remoteness, an entire concentration upon her own thoughts, which one sees in a child; and when one saw her thus, dreaming hillward, one knew there were great ongoings in that dusky head of hers. At sight of him she bowed gravely, moving that he might have nearly all the rug upon which she had been sitting, not minding the stones for herself in the least. Her careless generosity spoke even in this trifling act. "You are bored?" she asked, after a silence which he seemed disinclined to break. "To extinction, little lady," he answered, puffing a cloud of smoke into the hollyhocks. "You see, you have spoiled me for those others." There was another pause. "And you?" he asked. "I? Well, I practised, and planted some flowers, and made some things for Miranda's baby, and then"--she hesitated, with an adorably shy look full of that pathos, which made so many of her simplest statements seem claims for protection, "and then I went over into 'My Own Land.'" He regarded her for a minute, his approval of her showing in every line of his handsome face. It was in these untouchable moods of her, when she eluded him utterly, when she took him out of himself entirely, that he found the most zest in intercourse with her. "Is it a long journey to that land of yours?" he demanded, gravely, "making believe" with her. "Not long," she answered, "but sometimes difficult. I go down to a queer gate; I never knew where I got that gate," she threw in, in an explaining way; "and let down the bars and walk up a long driveway of blue pines, and there I am!"