“Why don’t you say something, David?” asked the girl, rapping her foot on the floor and unconsciously pulling the kitten’s fur.  “You’re not angry with me, are you?”

David saw that he must speak, and he determined to dissimulate no longer.  “No, Janet, but can’t you see how it must look to me?  How can you expect me to be happy over it?  Do you suppose, dear, that you could feel toward me, after a year at college, just as you do now?  Don’t you see how it would separate us and you’d have all your new friends and studies to take up your time and I’d just be plodding along here in the woods like a clod of turf?  How could you ever keep on loving me?  Don’t you see, Janet, how it sort o’ breaks my heart to say yes?”

The jets of milk shot into the pail with an angry rapidity.  The bar of sunlight lay almost horizontally now across the upper emptiness of the barn, transforming the thick-hung cobwebs into golden draperies and accentuating the twilight gloom below.  Janet threw the kitten out of her lap and, jumping from the chair, walked nervously to the window and looked out absently upon the meadow below.

“Well, I supposed it would come to that,” she said, with some indignation in her voice.  “It’s nice to feel that you can’t trust me out of your sight.  Don’t you think that if you really loved me as you say you’d be as glad as I was that I could get a better education?  But of course, if you’re afraid to trust me, why, I suppose I can give it up.”

The strain of decision had been a hard one for Janet, and she was now on the verge of giving way under it.  Her shoulders shook, and she put her face in her hands.  David heard her sobbing softly.

“Janet,” he said, “if you think that this is going to be a valuable thing for you, I’m not going to say a word against it.  You know that every wish I’ve got is for your good, and that’s God’s truth.  If you think it’s best to go, I’m going to try to think so too, and I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.”

Janet had left the window and came toward him, a joyful smile breaking through her tears.  “You are a dear, good boy, and I love you,” she said, and allowed him to kiss her.  He held her long in his big arms and his own eyes filled with burning tears.

He could not banish the thought that this might be the last time.

III

The gray desolation of a March afternoon brooded out over the wide meadows, out over the dim woods beyond, and still on to the half-visible hills in the distance, where it merged itself imperceptibly into a low, lead-colored sky.  Though the rain was not falling, everything dripped with the damp.  In front of the Waring farmhouse the road, wallowing with fat mud, stretched off in a dirty streak under the glistening limbs of the maples.  The door of the house opened and David came out.  His mother followed him anxiously.

“David, I hope it isn’t bad news,” she asked, laying her hand lightly on his shoulder.  “Can’t you tell me about it?”