She watched them off down the long walk under the heavy trees that shaded the approach to her new home, clasping and unclasping her hands in a panic of foreboding. It took all her strength of mind to keep her resolution not to disturb Basil during his working hours; she longed to rush to him and say what she could now say only to herself and the carved chair upon which she was kneeling by the window: "Oh, dear, oh dear! He is going to tell her he cares for her, and she is going to be horrid! Oh, Rob, how can you, when he is such a dear boy, and you know you will never look at any one else! it isn't like Prue. Oh, I wish Basil were here!" Wythie's forecast was proving entirely correct. Bruce walked down to the gate without a word, and Rob kept at his side with a most forbidding expression on her face, which seemed to have had all its ripples and sunshine frozen in Wythie's library. For a few paces down the street Bruce preserved this silence, then suddenly he halted, and turned on Rob fiercely. "Look here, Rob," he said. "You've been trying to keep out of my way, and I suppose you think I'll take that for my answer. But I won't! Are you going to marry me?" "No, indeed I am not," retorted Rob with equal emphasis. "Why not?" asked Bruce, walking on as if disposed to argue it. "Because I do not want to," said Rob, evidently not inclined to discussion. "But you care for me," insisted Bruce. "Do I? Well, I shall not very long if you bother me about such things," said Rob. "I want you, Rob," said Bruce with a break in his voice that softened Rob a little. "I wish you wouldn't; it is so unpleasant," she said. "Rob, dear, from the first moment that I saw you I cared for you in a boyish way. And now that I am a man you have grown to be so much a part of every hope I have, every thought I think, every effort I make that to tear you out of my life would leave a crippled Bruce Rutherford forever. I don't mean to appeal to your pity, of course, but it's the simple truth that my future lies at your mercy. It's not going to be with me as with Bartlemy. I don't mean that Bart wasn't in earnest and that Prue did not hurt him, but he has the artist nature, and he'll pull through. I'm a fellow of one idea, and it wouldn't be easy to uproot me and make me grow in new soil. Somehow, I can't imagine living without you, Rob. What's the use of my telling you all this, when you know me better than I know myself, when I've never had a secret from you in all these years of our fine friendship? You know what it will be if I have to try to limp along without you. You helped Hester with the Green Pasture's; why do you want to cripple me worse than that poor little chap you've got there is crippled? Can't you imagine what it means to me even to think of losing you, Rob?" Bruce held out his hands with an appealing gesture, and Rob saw them, the strong well-shaped, true doctor's hands, tremble.