She leaned back with closed eyes. She had hurt him so. She remembered all the glad, sweet confident things he had said each day. Now she had hurt him so.... What radiant faith, in love and in life, had been his. But she had spoiled that faith, and dimmed that brightness. Suddenly she remembered his dead mother's prayer for him. "_I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not_." And under those words she had written "_Christobel_." Would he want to obliterate that name? No, she knew he would not. Nothing approaching a hard or a bitter thought could ever find a place in his heart. It would always be the golden heart of her little Boy Blue. Tears forced their way beneath her closed lashes, and rolled slowly down her cheeks. "Oh, Boy dear," she said aloud, "I love you so--I love you so!" "I know you do, dear," he said. "It's almost unbelievable--yet I know you do." She opened her eyes. The Boy had come back. She had not heard his light step, on the springy turf. He knelt in his favourite place, on the left of her chair, and bent over her. Once more his face was radiant. His faith had not failed. She looked up into his shining eyes, and the joy in her own heart made her dizzy. "Boy dear," she whispered, "not my lips, because--I am not altogether yours--I may have to--you know?--the Professor. But, oh Boy, I can't help it! I'm afraid I care terribly." He was quite silent; yet it seemed to her that he had shouted. A burst of trumpet-triumph seemed to fill the air. He bent lower. "Of course I wouldn't, Christobel," he said; "not before the seventh day. But there's a lot beside lips, and it's all so dear." Then she felt the Boy's kisses on her hair, on her brow, on her eyes. "Dear eyes," he said, "shedding tears for my pain. Ah, dear eyes!" And he kissed them again. She put up her hand, to push him gently away. He captured it, and held it to his lips. "Stop, Boy dear," she said. "Be good now, and sit down." He slipped to the grass at her feet, and rested his head against her knee. She stroked his hair, with gentle, tender touch. Her Little Boy Blue had come back to her. Oh, bliss unutterable! Why worry about the future? "How silly we were, dear!" he said. "How silly to suppose we could part like that--you and I!" Then his sudden merry laugh rang out--oh, such music! such sweet music! "I say, Christobel," he said, "it is all very well _now_ to say 'Stop, and be good.' But on the seventh day, when the walls fall down, and I march up into the citadel, I shall give you millions of kisses--or will it be _billions_?" "Judging from my knowledge of you, Boy dear," she said, "I rather _think_ it would be billions." Later, as they stood once more by the postern gate, he turned, framed in the doorway, smiling a last gay good-bye. It was their second parting that day, and how different from the first. There was to be a third, unlike either, before the day was over; but its approach was, as yet, unsuspected.