you will--will you give me just a little time to--to get used to--to
thinking about it? Will you go now and leave me--and come back in a
few days? It is the last favor I shall ever ask of you. I promise when
you come back to--to pay the debt." And the color flooded over her
face, then receded, to leave her white and controlled.

"I felt sure you would see it that way; immediately, immediately, my
dear," answered the Senator, as he rose to take his departure. A
triumphant note boomed in his big gloating voice, but some influence
that it is given a woman to exhale in a desperate self-defense kept
him from bestowing anything more than an ordinary pressure on the cold
hand laid in his. Then with a heavy jauntiness he crossed the Road,
mounted his horse and, tipping his wide hat in a conquering-hero wave,
rode on down Providence Road toward Boliver.

And for a long, quiet moment Rose Mary stood leaning against the old
stone table perfectly still, with her hand pressing the sharp-edge
paper against her heart; then she sank into a chair and, stretching
her arms across the cold table, she let her head sink until the chill
of the stone came cool to her burning cheeks. So this was the door
that was to be opened in the stone wall--she had been blind and hadn't
seen!

And across the hills away by the sea he was tired and cold and
hungry--with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket. He was
discouraged and overworked, and a time was coming when she would not
have the right to shelter his heart in hers. Once when he had been so
ill, before he ever became conscious of her at all, his head had
fallen over on her breast as she had tended him in his weakness--the
throb of it hurt her now. And perhaps he would never understand. She