"I am going away awhile, Miss Harriet," he told her. "You are, really?" "Yes; I'm needed down in Atlanta for a while. I reckon I'll get back in a few weeks." He saw her face change, but he did not read it correctly. At that moment he could not have persuaded himself that she cared very much one way or the other. Surely a girl who had, scarcely six weeks before, sobbed in old Wambush's arms about her love for his son could not feel anything deeply pertaining to another man whom she had known such a short time. "Let's go back," he proposed, suddenly, and almost brutally. "I reckon we've gone far enough. Night comes on mighty quick here in the valley." She raised her eyes to his in a half-frightened glance, and said: "Yes; let's go back." He turned his horse, and for fifteen minutes they drove along in silence. There was now absolutely no pity in his heart. The vast black problem of his own tortured love seemed to be soaking into him from the very air about him. He broke the silence. "So you refused Bates?" She looked at him again. "How did you know that?" He laughed bitterly. "He told me so; he's another fool." "Mr. Westerfelt!" "I beg your pardon," he amended, quickly; "but any man is a fool to be simply crazy about a woman, and he is." He saw her raise her little shapely hand to her twitching mouth and experienced one instant's throbbing desire to catch it and hold it and beg her to have mercy on him and help him throw off the hellish despair that rested on him. It was a significant fact that she said nothing to protract the conversation on the line of Bates's proposal. To her the proposal and rejection of a king by her would have found no place in her thoughts, facing the incomprehensible mood of the man she loved. It was growing dark when they reached the hotel. As he aided her to alight he gave her his hand. "It's good-bye for a while, anyway," he said. She started; her hand was heavy and cold. She caught her breath. "When are you going, Mr. Westerfelt?" "In the morning after breakfast, by the hack to Darley." That was all. She lowered her head and passed into the house. In the hall she met her mother. "Great goodness, dear!" exclaimed the old woman; "what on earth did you run away from him so sudden for?" Harriet pushed past her into the parlor and stood fumbling with the buttons of her cloak. "Answer me, daughter," pursued Mrs. Floyd; "what did--" "Oh, God! don't bother me, mother," cried Harriet. Mrs. Floyd held her breath as she drew her daughter down on a sofa and stared into her face. "What's the matter, daughter? _Do_ tell me." "He's going away," said Harriet. "Oh, mother, I don't know what ails him! I never saw anybody act as he did. He had little to say, and when he spoke it looked as if he was mad with me. Oh, mother, sometimes I think he loves me, and then again--"