"I didn't say you couldn't, man! But _I_ want a hand in this thing. Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," said Hartley, turning on him. "What the thunder is the matter of you anyway? I like the girl, and she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an angel----" "There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert hastily. "F'r God's sake don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know it!" Hartley stared at him as he turned away. "Well, by jinks! What _is_ the matter o' you?" He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was homesick. Albert was beginning to have a vague under-consciousness of his real feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one point ceaselessly--a dreary prospect, in which the slender girl-figure had no place--and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank, and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing. When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final skating party down on the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a man might at the parting of two paths, saying: "I will not choose; I can not choose. I will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me." They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be said; the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak. "It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here--" she paused and looked up with a daring smile--"seems as if you'd been here always." It was about half past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was downtown finishing up his business. Albert's throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous; the girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her. "Well, Maud, I suppose--you know--we're going away to-morrow." "Oh, must you? But you'll come back?" "I don't expect to--I don't see how." "Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her clasped hands straining. "I must--I must!" he muttered, not looking at her, not daring to see her face. "Oh, what can I do--_we_ do, without you! I can't bear it!" She stopped and sank back into a chair, her breath coming heavily from her twitching lips, the unnoticed tears falling from her staring, pitiful, wild, appealing eyes, her hands nervously twisting her gloves. There was a long silence. Each was undergoing a self-revelation; each was trying to face a future without the other. "I must go!" he repeated aimlessly, mechanically.