"I am delighted to find you here," he volunteered. "It's a change. It will do you good--do us both good." "Are you quite well?" She hesitated slightly in asking that, but he turned upon her as if the words had given him a shock of terror or dismay. In her surprise she even fancied he paled a little. "What makes you ask that?" he cried. "What do you mean by it?" "Why, I don't know! You look well, but not quite yourself, perhaps,--somehow different." MacLeod took off his hat and wiped his forehead beaded with a moisture come on it, he knew, at that moment. "I should like to ask," he said peevishly, "what in the devil you mean. Have you--heard anything?" "No," said Rose, entirely amazed. "What is there to hear?" They had reached the station, and she led him to the bench under a tree where lovers and their lasses assembled at dusk to see the train come in. She sat down, dispirited and still wondering, and he stood before her, all strength, now, and candor, as if he had thrown off his dubious mood and resolved to be himself. "About the prince," he was saying. "I want you to think of him. He would give you experiences such as I never could. You'd live on velvet. You'd have art, music, a thousand things. He likes your voice. He'd insist on fostering that. You would meet men of rank, men of note--" She interrupted him. "Men of rank! I've no doubt of it. How about their wives?" He shook his head. A look of what seemed noble pain was on his face, impatience at the shallowness of things. "Rose," he said, "you know how little I respect society as it is. Take out of it what good you can, the play of emotion, the charm, the inspiration. Don't undervalue the structure, my dear. Live, in spite of it." She looked at him wearily and thought how handsome he was, and that these were platitudes. Then his train came, and he left her with a benedictory grace, standing on the step hat in hand, majestic in his courtesy. But as she watched him, suddenly, an instant before the train was starting she saw him yield and sway. He leaned upon the rail with both hands and then, as if by a quick decision, stepped to the platform again. She hurried to him, and found him with an unfamiliar look on his face. It might have been dread anticipation; it was surely pain. "What is it?" she asked him. "Tell me." He did not answer, but involuntarily he stretched out his hand to her. "Rub it," he said. "Hold it tight. Infernal! oh, infernal!" As she rubbed the hand he suddenly recovered his old manner. The color came back to his face, and he breathed in a deep relief. "That's over," he said, almost recklessly, she thought. "Queer how quick it goes!" "What is it?" She was trembling. It seemed to her that they had each passed through some mysterious crisis. "Is there another train to town?" he was asking an official, who had kept a curious eye on him. There would be in three minutes, an accommodation crawling after the express he had lost.