With some surprise he heard a laugh (he had not thought of her as a girl who laughed) so merry, so infectious that he found himself wondering what caused it as the girl herself came through the doorway to greet him, her rose face radiant, her eyes shining, her hand outstretched.

She was more loveworthy, more imperious, than he remembered her, a thing which bewildered him as he thought of her entreating smile, and her wistful and approving eyes.

She wore white, so simply made as to have something statuesque about the lines of the gown, and cut from the throat to show the poise of the head and the curls at the back of the neck.

“I could scarcely believe Nora when she said it was you.  Father is at Marlton.  I was so lonely.  It is good of you to come, even if only on business.  You are riding?” she asked, regarding his clothes.

“Yes,” he answered.  “I am going to the world’s end.”

“You will be sorry,” she returned, quickly.  “I have been there.  Carolina is better.  Stay here!”

She seated herself beside him on the settle as she spoke, and the odor of the red rose she wore at her breast came to him with the words.

He had taken off his hat and leaned his bare brown head against the high back of the bench.

“You see,” he began, his eyelids drawn together in his own way, his eyes fastened upon some remote distance, “I, too, have been lonely.  The only companionable person within hundreds of miles has refused me her society.  I have been driven, as it were, to the world’s end.”

“Do you mean me?” Katrine asked, smiling, and looking at him with eyes full of surprise.

“It is perhaps Nora to whom I refer,” he suggested, whimsically.

“She is not always companionable—­Nora,” Katrine returned; “and to-day she is not pleased with me, so I like her less than usual.  She purposed to cook nettles in the potatoes, and I remonstrated, and—­I have not absented myself from your society,” she said, abruptly breaking her talk after a woman’s way.

“Then why didn’t you watch the sunset from the Chestnut Ridge last night and the night before and the night before that?” he asked.

“Why didn’t I watch the sunset from the Chestnut Ridge?” she repeated after him, as though not understanding; and then, with a slow, steady smile, looking straight in his eyes, “The thought never occurred to me,” she said.

No studied coquetry could have piqued him as this simple statement, which he felt to be the plain truth.  He had taken three long walks on the off-chance of meeting a girl who apparently had forgotten his existence, and although the thought was humorous it stirred in him a determination to make his existence a remembered thing to her.

“But, if I had known,” she explained, and the selflessness and sweetness of her as she spoke touched him strangely—­“if I had thought you wanted to talk to me, I should have been glad to come.”