But Augusta well knew that this presentiment, which came treacherously stealing upon her in the dreaming moments when her spirit was wandering alone and unguarded in that border land where dreams and good stories come from, was not warning her against any material happening. With a prescience as cruel as eye-sight could have been, she knew that this thing would strike at her heart. And, her heart could only be hurt through Jimmie. Long ago she had foreseen and trembled at this day when love would make a coward of her. And although many times in the year past she had been able to believe that Jimmie loved her truly, the way a man chooses his girl and wants her, and not from any prompting of duty or mere affection, yet the fact remained, unescapable and unanswerable: _they had not started fair_. She had taken Jimmie at his word, when pity, and probably affection, and a pretty childish attractiveness, had prompted him to ask her to marry him. But, even then, she had known that it was not fair, for, even then, though neither of them would have believed this, she had been a woman while he was an impulsive boy. It was true that even in that time she had loved him with a love which he would not have believed her capable of even guessing at. But that made no difference. Jimmie had not been free. Nothing that had since passed had altered that fact. And Augusta had cruelly whipped herself into believing, that even if Jimmie had not cared for her in any way, his quick heart and his kindness for her mother and herself would have made him do just what he had done in the circumstances. (She was able to believe this because she knew that she herself, at that time, would have married the most repulsive man in the world if it had been a necessary condition for getting her mother out of the madhouse.) All this had lain away covered in her mind through the months of happiness and well being and hopeful, heart-filling work. But it was inevitable, as she had always known, that it would one day come forth and stalk upon her. The outward signs that the peace of her mind and the safety of her love were being threatened were indeed very slight. Jimmie was restless. Something was troubling him, that much she knew. Once or twice she had felt that he was on the point of speaking out, but the moment had passed and had left her with the dizzy, sinking feeling of a threat suspended. Sometimes she was able to lull the feeling of foreboding evil by the thought that it was merely the Spring. Everything about them was restless and stirring and shooting forth buds and blades, and all the little rivers of life were running full. It was only to be expected that they themselves, coming out of the close, storm bound life of the Winter, should feel a stirring of unrest, an urge of discontent and energy, towards something new.