Yet when it came to the actual parting it was Cis, not Nan, who cried tempestuously. She realized that this was a farewell that was final, however true it might be that they were, as she had said herself, “fast friends forever.” Complete divergence of paths and interest ends, not the will to friendship, but its actuality. At their age Nan, married and settled, Cis going on to meet life, would pass out of knowledge of their common beginning. She and Nan would contrive to meet occasionally, and, thus meeting, find it difficult to talk together after the first exchange of news items was over. Cis recognized this, and felt it sad, but she attributed her crying to little Matt. “He will grow every day, and do something new and darling every day, and I shall not see him, and he won’t know me when I do see him! If only babies wouldn’t grow up and begin to go to school so soon!” she sobbed, mumbling her godson’s soft cheeks. “Mercy!” cried Nan, shocked by the suggestion that her son would soon take his place in the ranks of those in the second age of man’s career. Miss Braithwaite’s coupé was waiting at the Beaconhite station to take Cis home when she arrived. She jumped into it with a thrill of joy and received Miss Braithwaite’s quiet, warm welcome shyly, yet with high delight. It seemed to her that at last “she belonged,” as she told herself; that this was a true home-coming. Miss Braithwaite looked tired; Cis saw it after they had reached the house and were settled down to tea-serving by Ellen in the splendid library. At Miss Braithwaite’s age the effects of hard experience take the appearance of physical ills, and often their form; it was less that Miss Braithwaite looked as if she had borne grief since Cis had last seen her, than that she looked as if she had seriously overtaxed herself, her nervous strength. “Oh, how good this is! How happy and how good!” Cis sighed dropping her hat on the chair nearest to her, leaning back in the low chair which she occupied and rumpling her heavy coils of hair into a looseness adjusted to the upholstery. “I’ve been bad, Miss Braithwaite, restless, unsatisfied, not knowing what was wrong, but suspecting a whole lot of things! And the suspicion that it was this house and Beaconhite was right! I wanted to be here.” “We are going to talk later; now it is tea, then rest, and this evening talk,” declared Miss Braithwaite. “Anselm wanted to come here to-night, but I forbade it; cloister observance for us this first night! Jeanette Lucas is to marry Paul Randolph, and be near by. Are you glad?” “Indeed I am, only--Well, of course she wants to marry Mr. Randolph,” Cis hesitated.