than the Wileys', particularly at dinner-time!

When the boy had slouched away, Stephen sat under the apple tree, now a mass
of roseate bloom, and buried his face in his hands.

It was not precisely a love-letter that he had read, nevertheless it blackened
the light of the sun for him. Claude asked Rose to meet him anywhere on the
road to the station and to take a little walk, as he was leaving that
afternoon and could not bear to say good-bye to her in the presence of her
grandmother. "_Under_the_circumstances_," he wrote, deeply underlining the
words, "I cannot remain a moment longer in Edgewood, where I have been so
happy and so miserable!" He did not refer to the fact that the time limit on
his return-ticket expired that day, for his dramatic instinct told him that
such sordid matters have no place in heroics.

Stephen sat motionless under the tree for an hour, deciding on some plan of
action. He had work at the little house, but he did not dare go there lest he
should see the face of dead Love looking from the windows of the pink bedroom;
dead Love, cold, sad, merciless. His cheeks burned as he thought of the
marriage license and the gold ring hidden away upstairs in the drawer of his
shaving stand. What a romantic fool he had been, to think he could hasten the
glad day by a single moment! What a piece of boyish folly it had been, and how
it shamed him in his own eyes!

When train time drew near he took his boat and paddled downstream. If for the
Finland lover's reindeer there was but one path in all the world, and that the
one that led to Her, so it was for Stephen's canoe, which, had it been set
free on the river by day or by night, might have floated straight to Rose.

He landed at the usual place, a bit of sandy shore near the Wiley house, and