“I wonder if he knows?” she said softly. “I wonder if it grieves him in the other world to know that I care for some one else? Not that you are forgotten, dearest,” she said, as if she were holding a conversation with some imaginary person. “I do not love you any the less, but I can’t help loving him too;” and she looked down as if she had made a shameful confession. “Oh, I don’t know what to do!” she cried piteously. “If I only knew--if I only knew!” and she turned sadly from the door. Conway did not come that day. Truth to tell, the doctor found this parting harder to bear than even he had anticipated, and he hardly dared to trust himself with Norine. But on the next day he came. There was only one more day now before their departure. “Come,” he said; “shall we go through the woods once more?” And she got her hat, with her heart fluttering ominously, and joined him. They were both silent and preoccupied as they went over the well-known places together, and they were nearing home again before they either of them awoke from their trance. “And this is the last time,” said Conway at last; “and after to-morrow we part?” Norine tried to make some trifling reply, but could not accomplish it. “Perhaps next summer----” she began weakly. “We can neither of us tell where we will be next summer,” replied Conway gloomily, and then lapsed into silence. They were nearly home, when she laid her hand timidly on his arm. “I want to tell you something,” she said, “if you will not blame me.” He stopped and looked at her, but made no reply. What was there that he could blame _her_ for? “You are such an old friend,” she said, standing before him with downcast eyes and fluttering hands. “You are such an old friend, you will understand me and not think any wrong of me. But, oh, Lester! you have been so good, and--and I like you so much, that I wanted to tell you, before I go, that if you want me to, very bad, I will be your wife.” And then before he could recover from his stupor; before he could even take her in his arms, she was flying homeward as if possessed of wings, leaving him faint with his sudden happiness. She was home before he got there, and had locked herself in her room. But she would see him to-morrow, she said, and he went home reeling with the happiness that as yet he could scarcely understand. How he passed the night he never knew. He lived in another world. That this happiness he had waited so long for should come to him so unexpectedly was almost incomprehensible, and a dozen times that night he woke to wonder if it were not all a dream. Good, motherly Mrs. Allan was somewhat startled at the sudden change in his appearance. But when he called her Norine and abstractedly stirred his coffee with his fork, she understood it all; and there came a gentle glow in her motherly heart as she thought that now, perhaps, she and her darling Lettie might be reunited.