“It was from Josef, of course, that I had most help, always belittling this affair, always trying to make me forget in work.  I was too tired at night to grieve; I had to sleep.  ‘Women,’ he said, ’coddle their griefs!  They revel in hopeless passion!  They nurse it!  Remember,’ he said, ‘there are two ways to forget:  weeping and making swings.’  Well,” she finished, “he taught me to make swings.”

“And you have forgotten?” Francis asked, standing beside her, magnetic, compelling, taken out of himself.

Memories were drawing them together.  Remembered kisses, words, spoken lips to lips, and that elemental sweet attraction of man for woman, which should be ranked with the other great elemental things like fire, water, earth, and air.  Katrine rose also, and they stood looking into each other’s eyes.

“No,” she answered, quite steadily, “I have not forgotten.  I never shall forget.  I would give my life to feel that you are the man I once believed you to be, the man I believe you could have been.”

“Will you be frank with me, Katrine?” he demanded.

“Have I ever been anything else?” she questioned, in return.

“You have avoided me since you came.”

“Yes, only I hope not noticeably.”

“No, it was well done, but why?”

“Can you ask?”

“I do ask.”

“I did not want ever to see you again nor to talk to you as we are talking now.”

“Answer me, Katrine!” he cried, bending toward her.  “Answer me!  Why did you never want to see me again?”

There still was the look in her eyes of sweetest frankness as she answered:  “There were many reasons before I saw you that first night why I should never wish to see you again.  But after that there was only one—­one—­one that filled my mind.  I am afraid.”

“Afraid!” he repeated, with the man’s look of the chase in his eye, “afraid of what, Katrine?”

She had moved by the fireplace, and with a hand on the chimney-shelf turned her eyes to meet his own, with the clear, unafraid look in them of the olden times.

“When I first saw you here, the night I sang, I became afraid you were a man whom I had simply overestimated in the past because of my youth.  I have avoided you ever since for fear I should find it to be true.  I am afraid you are a man who is simply ‘not worth while.’” The words were spoken softly, even with a certain odd tenderness, but they struck Francis Ravenel like a blow in the face, and he set his lips, as a man does in physical suffering.

“I think it is just,” he said, at length.  “I think that describes me as I am:  a man who is not worth while.  Only, you see, Katrine, I was not prepared to hear the truth from you.”  He grew white as he spoke.  “In all of your letters you spoke so divinely of that old-time love.”

For an instant she regarded him with startled attention, her eyebrows drawn together, both hands brought suddenly to her throat.