Taking her hands and drawing them to his heart he bent his head down to hers as reverently as if that gentle, lingering kiss were a sacrament. Turning away, he went swiftly down the path he had come. Elise sat down upon the boulder from which she had risen at his coming. With her arms clasping her knees, her head was bowed above them, and her shoulders drooped in abject hopelessness. Looking up at the sound of his steps returning, she half turns to motion him away. "No, no. It means only that I no longer dissemble before you. Go. There is no hope." And as he obeys she settles back motionless again into that living statue of Despair. * * * * * When Mrs. Hazard read in that Sunday’s paper an account of the Spartanburg meeting she was dismayed. She had been on the _qui vive_ for nearly a week, though not looking to the newspapers for information. Rutledge’s repudiation of Elise angered her. Monday’s papers, however, brought her better temper. She laughed softly as she read among the Virginia Springs items that Mr. Rutledge had arrived there on Sunday afternoon. She was somewhat mystified, though, by the fact that Mr. Rutledge had been so hopeless on Saturday afternoon,—and she was struck with consternation when at last she happened upon a local item which said Mr. Rutledge had passed through the city Sunday night on his return to South Carolina. "I think she might have written me!" she said when Monday’s noon mail brought no letter from her friend. "I’m going to run over to see Elise this afternoon, if I can catch the train," she told her husband at luncheon; and at 3:18 she was on the way. A wreck ahead of them put her at the Virginia Springs hotel about bed-time. * * * * * "How did you get here? I’m so glad to see you!" Elise exclaimed when Lola appeared at the cottage next morning. "Came last night," Lola said, giving her a hug, "but a miserable wreck held us up till long after dark. I would have come directly here even then, but I did not know how your mother was." "She is much better," Elise said. "Come right in to see her." Lola loved Mrs. Phillips very heartily, but she felt that Elise was precipitate in taking her immediately to her mother’s room. She went along, of course, and sat down and talked to the two of them for an hour or more. There seemed to be no end to the things they discussed,—the more interminable they were because of the fact that Mrs. Hazard had not made her journey for the pleasure of a general conversation. She could not understand why Elise did this thing. She tried to read the young lady’s reason in her face, but that told nothing. It had not the elation that bespoke a heart joyous in its love. Neither, in the conventional gayety of the three-cornered conversation, did it betray a heart that was desolate. The only thing certain was Elise’s evident avoidance of a _tête-à-tête_ with her best friend.