“No—oh, no,” said Lois, driving back the tears at this causeless injury. “Mr. Leverich—he was here one morning—said it was best not to. He was rather unpleasant, though. But nobody knows about your being away at all. You’re not going now, Justin—without even seeing baby?” “I’ll see him to-night when I come home,” said Justin, rising. He kissed the children and his wife hastily, but she followed him into the hall, standing there, dumbly beseeching, while he brushed his hat with the hat-brush on the table, and then rummaged hastily as if for something else. “Here are your gloves, if that is what you are looking for,” she said. “Yes, thank you.” He bent over and kissed her again, as if really seeing her for the first time, with a whispered “Poor girl!” That momentary close embrace brought her a needed—oh, so needed!—crumb of comfort. She who had hungered so insatiably for recognition could be humbly thankful now for the two words that spoke of an inner bond. But all day she could not get rid of that feeling of suspense that had been hers for five days past; the strain was to end, of course, with Justin’s return, but it had not ended—in some sad, weighting fashion it seemed to have just begun. What was he so worried about? Was she never to hear any more? That night Girard came over, but with him was another visitor—William Snow. No sun could brown that baby-fair skin of William’s, but he had an indefinably large and Western air; the very way in which he wore his clothes showed his independence. Dosia did not notice his swift, covert, shamefaced glance at her when she came into the room where he was talking to Lois—his avoidance of her the year before had dropped clear out of her mind; but his expression changed to one of complacent delight as she ran to him instantly and clasped his arms with both hands to cry, “Oh, Billy, Billy, I’m so glad to see you! I am so glad—I can’t tell you how glad I am!” “All right, Sweetness, you’re not going to lose me again,” said William encouragingly. “My, but you do knock the spots out of those Western girls. Can’t we go in the dining-room by ourselves? I want to ask you to marry me before we talk any more.” “Yes, do,” said Dosia, dimpling. It was sweet to be chaffed, to be heedlessly young once more, to take refuge from all disconcerting thoughts—and from the new embarrassment of Girard’s presence—with Billy in the corner of the other room, where she sat in a low chair, and he dragged up an ottoman close in front of her. Through the open window the scent of honeysuckle came in with the gloom. “Oh, but you’ve grown pretty!” he said, his hands clasped over his knees, gazing at her. “That’s right, get pink—it makes you prettier. I like this slimpsy sort of dress you’ve got on; I like that black velvet around your throat; I—have you missed me much?” “No,” said Dosia, with the old-time sparkle. “I’ve hardly thought of you at all. But I feel now as if I had.”