He rose and went over to the mantel. The fire was low and he heaped it up with the largest sticks in the wood-box; then dropping on one knee he took up the bellows and had it roaring in a moment. “I like a big fire,” he said, over his shoulder. She nodded and let her eyes rest on him as he worked over the fire. Yes, he was a good deal older; his frame had filled out and settled; and in his manner, too, some of the rough edges had been rubbed down--a fact she whimsically regretted. She got up now and pushed the big chair up beside the fire and sat across from him. For a time they said nothing--he sitting on a stool at one side of the hearth, she in the chair at the other; he applying the bellows in a moody, desultory way, she leaning back watching first him and then the leaping flames. Finally he said, letting the bellows swing between his knees, still keeping his eyes on the fire: “Margaret!” She started a little and a quick, almost shy glance shot from her eyes; but he seemed wholly unconscious that he had never directly called her by that name before. He swung the bellows slowly to and fro like a pendulum. “What made you think I wouldn't be interested?” “Why--I don't know that I meant exactly that------” He went on, still without looking up: “Was it anything in what I wrote before?” Yes, there had been some writing before--when he was first at Wauchung, and she, eager for her little protégé in the city, had kept him informed of George's progress and had relied on his counsel. And now, as he brought that correspondence up in his mind, and remembered how it had bothered him, how he had avoided every personal reference and had made it easy always for her to stop when she chose, and how she finally had stopped--when he had these facts before him, he was thankful that the fire could partly explain his colour. “I'm afraid I wasn't a very satisfactory correspondent,” he added, “but those weren't very satisfactory days. I was sailing pretty close then--I had some college expenses to pay back, and I was learning the business, and altogether I didn't see much fun in living. If you have thought of me since as the same sort of fellow I was then, I don't blame you for not wanting to write.” He looked up at her for a reply; but she only smiled a little and slowly shook her head.