Once when a little girl, Jerrie had said to Harold, ’Why do all the boys want to kiss me so much?’ and now she might have asked, ’Why do these same boys wish to marry me?’ It was a curious fact that she should have had three offers within twenty-four hours; and she didn’t like it, and her face wore a troubled look all that hot afternoon as she stood at the ironing table, perspiring at every pore, and occasionally smiling to herself as she thought, ’Grassy Spring, Le Bateau, Tracy Park, I might take my choice, if I would, but I prefer the cottage,’ and then at the thought of Tracy Park her thoughts went off across the sea to Germany, and the low room with the picture upon the wall, and her resolve to find it some day.

’Far in the future it may be, but find it I will, and find, too, who I am,’ she said to herself, little dreaming that the finding was close at hand, and that she had that day lighted the train which was so soon to bear her on to the end.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

MAUDE.

Harold did not finish his work at the Allen farm-house until Tuesday, so it was not until Wednesday afternoon that he started to pay his promised visit to Maude.  Jerrie had seen her twice, and reported her as much better, although still very weak.

’She is so anxious to see you.  Don’t you think you can go this afternoon?’ she said to Harold, in the morning, as she helped him weed the garden and pick the few strawberries left upon the vines.

‘Ye-es, I guess I can—­if you’ll go with me,’ he said.

He was so loth to be away from Jerrie when it was not absolutely necessary, that even a call upon Maude without her did not seem very tempting.  But Jerrie could not go now, for Nina and Marian Raymond came down to the cottage to spend the afternoon, and Harold went alone to the park house, where he found Maude in the room she called her studio trying to finish a little water-color which she had sketched of the cottage as it was before the roof was raised.

‘I mean it for Jerrie,’ she had said to Harold, who stood by her when she sketched it, ’and I am going to put her under the tree, with her sun bonnet hanging down her back, as she used to wear it when she was a little girl, and you are to be over there by the fence, looking at me coming up the lane.’

It was the best thing Maude had ever done, for the likeness to Jerrie and to herself was perfect, while the cottage, embowered in trees and flowers, made it a most attractive picture.  Harold had praised it a great deal, and told her that it would make her famous.  But when the carpenter work came in Maude put it aside until now, when she brought it out again, and was just beginning to retouch it in places, as Harold was announced.

She was looking very tired, and it seemed to Harold that she had lost many pounds of flesh since he saw her last.  Her face was pale, and pinched, and wan, but it flushed brightly as Harold came in, and she went eagerly forward to meet him.