“Elizabeth!” He stood in the open door and called to her; and she started as from a deep sleep, her face blazing into glad sunshine at sight of him.  She put her hand to her heart, and smiled.

“I have brought you some flowers,” he said grimly.  “I am afraid there isn’t much left of them now; but, such as they are, they are here.  I hope you will accept them.”

“Oh!” gasped Elizabeth, reaching out for the poor crushed roses as if they had been a little child in danger.  She drew them from the battered box and to her arms with a delicious movement of caressing, as if she would make up to them for all they had come through.  He watched her, half pleased, half savagely.  Why should all that tenderness be wasted on mere fading flowers?

At last he spoke, interrupting her brooding over his roses.

“You are running away from me!” he charged.

“Well, and what if I am?” She looked at him with a loving defiance in her eyes.

“Don’t you know I love you?” he asked, sitting down beside her and talking low and almost fiercely.  “Don’t you know I’ve been torn away from you, or you from me, twice before now, and that I cannot stand it any more?  Say, don’t you know it?  Answer, please,” The demand was kind, but peremptory.

“I was afraid so,” she murmured with drooping eyes, and cheeks from which all color had fled.

“Well, why do you do it?  Why did you run away?  Don’t you care for me?  Tell me that.  If you can’t ever love me, you are excusable; but I must know it all now.”

“Yes, I care as much as you,” she faltered, “but——­”

“But what?” sharply.

“But you are going to be married this week,” she said in desperation, raising her miserable eyes to his.

He looked at her in astonishment.

“Am I?” said he.  “Well, that’s news to me; but it’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.  When does the ceremony come off?  I wish it was this morning.  Make it this morning, will you?  Let’s stop this blessed old train and go back to the Doctor.  He’ll fix it so we can’t ever run away from each other again.  Elizabeth, look at me!”

But Elizabeth hid her eyes now.  They were full of tears.

“But the lady—­” she gasped out, struggling with the sobs.  She was so weary, and the thought of what he had suggested was so precious.

“What lady?  There is no lady but you, Elizabeth, and never has been.  Haven’t you known that for a long time?  I have.  That was all a hallucination of my foolish brain.  I had to go out on the plains to get rid of it, but I left it there forever.  She was nothing to me after I saw you.”

“But—­but people said—­and it was in the paper, I saw it.  You cannot desert her now; it would be dishonorable.”

“Thunder!” ejaculated the distracted young man.  “In the paper!  What lady?”

“Why, Miss Loring!  Geraldine Loring.  I saw that the preparations were all made for her wedding, and I was told she was to marry you.”