But the flowers have been a wonderful sight.”

She stooped and touched them with her fingertips and then brushed her palm lightly over the fronds of the ferns.

“Good-bye, little flowers,” she said softly. “When I come back you’ll be gone, I suppose, but perhaps another year I’ll see you again—” Then she turned and hurried down the hill.

The young man watched the sweetness of her face as she touched the flowers, and something very wistful came into his own eyes. He helped her carefully down the hillside till they had come to the road again, and then both fell into a quick stride, knowing that the time was short. They were silent till they came to the edge of town again, each busy with their own thoughts. Somehow they felt as if they had known one another a long time, each dreading to have this pleasant intimacy come to an end.

Constance, as she neared her home, reflected that everybody was up now; breakfast would be almost over. She must run the gauntlet of her acquaintances who happened to be on the street, and she must meet the tantalizing questions of her brother and perhaps also of her father and mother. They would be a little hurt that she was late to breakfast on this her last morning. How crazy she had been to go off on this crazy wild-goose chase with this unique stranger.

And yet as she looked up at him with a swift, furtive glance, there was something compelling in his gaze, something so strong and sweet and dependable about him that, in spite of herself, she had to be glad she knew him. It was nice to know there was one such man in the world. She wondered if he would stay so. If he could possibly survive the times and keep his faith.

They had come to her father’s gate now, and she paused, unable to say the bright, flippant words that she felt would be appropriate to end such a very irregular acquaintance as this had been.

Seagrave put out his hand.

“I’ll thank you again for this beautiful morning,” he said with a gravely sweet look.

Constance had a strange impulse to cry.

“In spite of the fact that I’m only a little unsaved pagan?” she asked archly with a long sweep of her dark lashes and an upward look that she found most effective with other admirers.

But he did not laugh away her words. He only looked long and earnestly at her.

“I shall be praying that my Lord Jesus will meet you, somewhere, somehow!” he said gently.

It was just at that moment when her soul was most touched that Ruddy Van swept up to the sidewalk in his new roadster and called loudly to Constance.

“Hello, Con, got your baggage ready? I’ve come to take you to the train.”

Constance looked up, annoyed, and Seagrave, with a courteous good-bye, marched away down the street, leaving her with a strange, unfinished feeling, as if something rather wonderful and interesting were gone out of her life.

Chapter 4

In the end Constance did not go until the noon train, and Ruddy Van Arden went back to his office crestfallen, for there was no way in which he could get off at noon to take the lady to the station without running actual risk of dismissal. He could not expect leave of absence twice in one day.

So it was Frank who drove his sister to the train after all and gave her an unpleasant fifteen minutes until the train came, asking if she had remembered to pack the blue flowers from the dining room bowl, and if she didn’t want him to send them on to her afterward.

Ordinarily Constance did not mind teasing. She wondered why she minded it so much this time. Perhaps it was that she was annoyed with herself for having gone off to the woods that morning at the beck and call of an utter stranger and thrown the whole morning out of its neat and orderly calculation. Or perhaps it was because she found herself thinking wistfully of the pleasant brown eyes and the earnest conversation. She had never met a man like this one before.

“He’s all right, kid,” said Frank suddenly, watching his sister with approving eyes. “No kidding, he is. Bill Howarth told me last night he’s a number one. A real man. He has no end of honors from his college, both scholarly and athletic, and they say he’s a whiz at business. Only thing is, his dad lost all their money just before he died. So of course that’ll put him outta the running with you.”

“What on earth do you mean, Frank, you crazy boy?” she asked sharply. “When did I ever act like a snob?”

“Oh, not a snob exactly,” said Frank, staring off down the tracks at the approaching train. “But of course anybody that is willing to change religions for a string of matched pearls wouldn’t naturally be supposed to rush a fella that couldn’t support matched pearls. You’re outta his class, you know, kid. You gotta live up to Grand’s pearls—or down to ’em, I don’t know which you’d call it. Supposed ta be up, isn’t it?”

“Frank, you certainly are the most absurd and ridiculous boy,” said his sister, trying to laugh it off. “As if the man was anything but a pleasant chance acquaintance!”

“Oh yeah?” remarked the implacable brother.

But Constance’s cheeks were burning from an altogether new cause of disturbance that had suddenly entered her mind. Here she had been priding herself that she was honest anyway; she had confessed to the stranger that she had united with the church to please her grandmother.