But she did not wait to hear him enumerate the virtues of the man who had looked straight into her eyes and lied without a tremor; the man who was proud of his conquests with the fair sex, and had boasted that he would amuse himself with her while in Kingsbridge. What a despicable creature the fellow was! She left the store. On the way back home, Janet passed several persons without noticing them at all, but she kept her face set with the fixed purpose of preventing any one who saw her from imagining that she was fighting back a flood of tears. Glad that her father was out for a morning walk, she avoided the maid, hurried to her room, locked the door, and permitted the flood to burst the restraining gates. After a time, having “cried it out,” she sat in an easy-chair near the window, watching a mother robin on her nest in the tree outside. She was not thinking of the robin, however; she was thinking of yesterday and the meeting in the woods――a day she had thought the happiest of her life. She was thinking of the manner in which Locke had looked at her with those clear, honest brown eyes, and how she had thrilled beneath that look. She was thinking of his voice as, sitting on the log and leaning toward her, he had quoted the words of Bassanio, causing the heart, now cold and heavy in her breast, to leap and throb until it seemed that he must hear its joyous beating. No man had ever stirred her like that, and something told her that no other man could so stir her again. And all the time he had been playing with her――amusing himself! That day, “the happiest of her life,” was a day to regret; a day to forget――if she could forget it. Would the sun ever again shine as brightly? Would the woods ever seem so shadowy cool and inviting? Would the flowers ever be so fair and sweet? She had loved the world and everything in it, and her blood had danced in her veins, and her feet had longed to dance, despite it being the Sabbath day; her very soul had seemed to sing with a joy as wide as eternity. Now the sun was shining outside her window, but there was something gone from its golden glamour; her blood that had danced flowed chill in her body, and her heart was full with a pain too great for it to contain. “A dream,” she whispered dully――“nothing but a dream. It is over!” CHAPTER XXXVII THE BELL BOY On Wednesday Bancroft was to play again in Kingsbridge, and Thursday was to be the “middle of the week lay-off” for both the Bullies and the Kinks.