"Poor old thing!" said Cathleen. "I don't see that it matters much. You're you, just the same. We live in a house called Roseneath. It's in Putney, but we call it London. Father makes a lot of money, and is a recorder and all the rest of it, but we aren't anything in particular. We turn up our noses at a lot of people, but there are lots more people who turn up their noses at us. You'd laugh if you could see how savage it makes Edith and Rachel sometimes when they grovel for invitations and don't get them. And it was wonderful what a difference it made when Basil got his blue at Cambridge. All Putney----" She threw out her hands to indicate the extent of her brother's triumph. Then, realizing how far their talk had taken them from the sweet employment which was their habit, she crept nearer. "If I thought all that nonsense was going to upset you, and hang about you while we're waiting, I'd run away with you to-morrow." "Oh, my darling!" cried he, overcome by this recklessness and proof of the seriousness of her intentions. They sat with hands clasped, gazing into each other's eyes in a charmed happiness. "Forever and ever," said René. "Forever and ever," cried she. "It isn't many people who find the real thing in the first." He glowed. "Oh! we must never spoil it." Then they lay side by side with the volume of love poems between them, and he read aloud their favorites. They became very sorrowful as they realized that the last moments of their golden days were running out, and they held each other close in a long shy embrace, and they kissed each other fearfully, and Cathleen could not keep back her tears. "You will write to me?" "Oh, yes, yes." "Good-by, my dear, good-by." So reluctantly, with dragging steps, they walked out of their glade and into the path leading to the great house. At the last turn they embraced again, and parted quickly on a sudden crackling in the woods. They saw nothing, but they walked on more swiftly, in a silence more full of fear than of love. At the garden gate they were met by Mr. Bentley, Cathleen's father. To René he loomed very large, and he felt a sickening internal disturbance as he saw that his presence was ignored. "I've been looking for you everywhere," said Mr. Bentley. "I've been a walk." "Your mother wants you." "At once?" "She wanted you an hour ago." Cathleen sped away. Disconcertingly René knew that her father's whole attention was concentrated upon him, though the lawyer's little cunning eyes were not looking at him. They both stood still, with the silence between them growing colder and colder. René hotly imagined himself saying: "Sir, I love your daughter and she loves me. I am poor but able. I have won many prizes at school, and in the Faculty of Economics and Commercial Science in the University of Thrigsby. I am young, sir, but----" When at last he opened his lips he said: "We--we've been a walk." "So I perceive." "The woods are very beautiful at this time of year."