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quiet, the sunshine filtering about them. When he looked at her again she shivered a little.

"Go away, please," she said in a low voice.

For answer he moved a little nearer to her. His hand reached out and took the small brown one. He stroked it softly. She sat passive for a moment, her face averted. Then she gathered herself anew.

"Go away," she said.

He opened his lips to speak, but she stopped him with a gesture, and he stood up, looking about him.

"I came to tell you something," he said slowly, "but it can wait."

"I know what it is; mother told me." She was digging a stick into the moss, and the words came in jerks as she dug.

He dropped on his knees.

"And you don't care? " The near-sighted eyes came very close to her, pleadingly.

"Why should I care!" She tried to look stern; but her lip played her false, and she looked helplessly away, winking fast.

"I did n't know," he said humbly. "I have seen you so little. But I know you so well—oh, so well!" His hands were reaching out to her.—"And those nights in the forest!"

She had turned, and was looking at him with wide eyes.

"And this morning when I talked with your mother, she seemed so sure."

"She thought it was Ethelberta," said Henrietta, miserably. Her voice was a whisper. Her eyes had grown very wide and dark.

He stared at her. "Ethelberta? Never!"

Then the eyes laughed at him archly—as they had laughed at him before in that other world. And he bent toward them. "Then you meant me!" she said softly. "Me!"

And the brown hands stole out to meet him, and the gates of that other world closed with a click, and shut them in forever.

A SONNET OF MAIDENHOOD

BY M. CANNAH

CIGH not for me, O rosy, guarded wife,
Outlooking from your love-encircled nest,
Where little hands grope soft about your breast-
Upon my days, storm-buffeted and rife
With the vague fears of loneliness and strife;
For sweetly though you fare and sweetly rest,
Dear is the freedom of my upward quest
And dear the promise of my cloistral life.
I love the half-blown rose, the crescent moon;
The last green hill I would not reach and climb;
Still, still I hear the faint, alluring chime
Of dreamland, silenced in your wifehood's noon;
And over me shall shine till life is gone
The great white star of girlhood's dewy dawn.