stumbled toward her, that he knelt beside her—that she was in his arms.

"Hush," he was saying in that beating darkness of emotion. "Hush, don't cry—I—I will never let you go——"

When the storm had spent itself and when at last she met his long gaze, he whispered, "I'm not sure now that it is right——"

"You will be sure as the years go on," she whispered back; then, tremulously: "but I—I could never have—talked that way if I had thought of you as the man. I had to think of you as the little boy—who dreamed."