He was seeing it and felt bewildered and wanted to be alone to think it out. “Yes, it is better to go home,” he said, rising to his feet and steadying himself with a great effort. “I am ashamed of my weakness,” he continued, “but you see my head is at fault and it is so hot.” He would not admit that the episode of the well had anything to do with his collapse. It was a headache and the heat, and he talked of the sultry weather as they walked slowly to the gate where, unless he accompanied her home, he would leave her. “You must not go with me,” she said, as she saw he made no sign of turning in the direction of the McPherson place. “I am quite equal to going alone. I believe upon my soul that this moment I feel stronger than you do, and ought to go with you. Shall I?” “No, oh no,” he answered quickly. “I am not quite so bad as that.” “Good-by, then,” she said, and gave him her hand and a smile which stirred him out of his apathy, it was so sympathetic. For an instant he bent over her hand, while there passed through his mind the thought that if she was to be his wife he might as well kiss it, and he would perhaps have done so but for Mrs. Parks, who, as she had called Rena the day before when she stood with Tom among the pines, now sent her voice like a fog-horn down the lane to the gate where Irene and Rex were standing. “Miss Burdick, Miss Burdick, where be you? It’s going on one o’clock and the steak is cold as a stone.” Irene laughed and said, as Rex dropped her hand, “That’s a call I do not dare disobey, so good-by again.” “Good-by. There is something I was going to say, but it has gone from me. I’ll see you to-morrow and be more like myself,” Rex said; and with another smile Irene walked rapidly up the lane while Rex took his way more slowly toward the McPherson Place. CHAPTER XIV REX AND COLIN To say that he was a good deal upset would not fully describe Rex’s condition when he reached home and, declining lunch on the plea of a headache, went to his room. His head was aching with that wavy, trembling feeling, hard to combat, and every nerve was quivering with excitement. “Let me rest a bit and get cool and I shall be able to think clearly, and know it was only a hallucination of my disordered brain,” he thought, as he dashed the cold water over his face and head till his hair was dripping wet. “It was exactly that way with poor Nannie,” he continued, as he tried to dry his hair and face. “She was thinking so much of Sandy and so afraid she should see him that she thought she did, while I—well, I wasn’t thinking of Irene, but of the ridiculous thing I was doing to please a girl and what Tom would say if he knew it. I was not expecting to see her, but I did; or something very like half of her, even the little fancy comb stuck on one side of her hair was plain. I could not be mistaken.”