“Thank you,” she said, coldly, and she sank back rigidly on the grass. He returned a moment later with Lionel in his arms. She could see, as she swept them with a hurried glance, that Galt was pressing the child close against his breast with a look of despair in his white face. Reaching Dora, Galt was lowering the child to the ground when Lionel clung tightly round his neck, pressing his little hand against his cheek. “What is the matter?” Lionel asked, anxiously. “Mamma, he can't talk. He tries, but he can't; he is trembling all over; he is about to cry. What is the matter with him?” Reaching up, and without a word, Dora took the child into her arms, and, holding him across her lap as if he had been an infant, she bent over his face to kiss him. Presently she looked up at Galt, and her proud lip trembled as she said: “Oh, Kenneth, fate is handling us strangely. I spoke harshly just now, for I can see that you are suffering. I wish I could be less human. After all my dreams, I am of the earth, earthy. I am no higher than a worm of this soil, after all the heights I thought I had climbed. But I can't help myself. I could never forget. I might try throughout eternity, but I'd never, never forget--forget that I offered myself wholly, body and soul, and that you refused to--to take me when I was in trouble. It may be sinful to look at it so, but I simply can't see it otherwise. You must really go now. Good-bye!” “Good-bye,” he echoed, in his throat. “I am going away to-morrow, and I promise never to intrude myself upon either of you again.” “'Good-bye?'--you said 'good-bye!'” Lionel suddenly sat up in his mother's lap and stared from his great, startled eyes, his beautiful mouth puckered up and quivering. “Yes, I have to go away,” Galt faltered, his glance averted. “I only came to spend a short time at Stafford.” “But you told me you never would go away from me,” the child persisted. “Don't you remember the day I fell and hurt my knee, and you washed it and put the medicine on it? Don't you remember you kissed me, and hugged me, and wanted me to kiss you, and said if I'd promise to be your little boy you would always stay with me? How can I be your little boy if--if you go off?” The eyes of the mother and father met in the strangest stare that ever passed between two mortal creatures. “I can always love you if I can't be with you,” Galt faltered, conscious of the emptiness of his words. “I can always love you and think what a plucky little boy you are, and--and--” His voice trailed away into nothingness. A sob rose in his throat and choked him. “But I want you to _stay!_” The child was crying now, with his chubby hands to his eyes. Suddenly Dora, with a desperate movement, pressed him to her breast. “You must not play on his feelings that way!” she cried, fiercely, casting a significant glance toward the town. “Go, please!”