Randall did not always sit near her in church. Sometimes he even forced himself to take a seat where he could not look at her at all, but it was something to him to feel her nearness. One Sunday, however, he thought he had won the right to treat himself to an unusual indulgence of proximity, so on entering the church, after she had taken her usual place, he quietly walked into the seat on a line with her, and took his place near the end, where he was only separated from her by the partition dividing the pews. Never in his life had his manner been more quiet and composed, than as he sat there, profoundly still, with his eyes fixed attentively upon the preacher. He knew that she had recognized him, and he was perfectly confident that she blushed, but no one observing him would have seen in his manner anything but the coldest composure. It was, none the less, a very sweet consciousness to sit there quietly, close by her side, and he half fancied it was also pleasure to her. During the sermon he was acutely aware of her, and of every slightest movement that she had made in shifting her position, or moving her feet upon the footstool. And once, only once, he heard her breathe a little sigh, the sound of which stirred him to tenderness. After the sermon the hymn was given out, and it proved to be the one that had been sung on the occasion of his first coming here. When the young girl rose with the open book in her hand, she observed that he had no book, and with a movement at once frank and timid she offered him hers, glancing up at him as she did so. He shook his head, declining to deprive her of it, but at the same time he caught hold of its extreme corner nearest him and continued to hold it so, until she saw his meaning, and took hold of the opposite corner. Then in a carefully modulated and sympathetic voice, which had great sweetness and charm without remarkable power, he began to sing. Admiring women had been touched by his voice before to-day, and it was no wonder if it touched with power the woman standing at his side. He hoped it did, at least, but he could divine nothing, as her little shabby thumb supported the book unwaveringly until the hymn was ended. Walking homeward that day, Randall looked his present condition in the face more boldly and honestly than he had ever done before, and the result of it was that he owned that he was in love. Having made this acknowledgment to himself, that he was really in love, he faced the possible consequences squarely also, and he came to the conclusion that his only safety was in flight. As for marrying a street singer, whom he had seen insulted by a common rough, and who had a voice as rasping to him as a peacock’s, he might be more or less of a fool in his love of having his own way, but he was not such a fool as that!