“I thank you, sir, for all you have done—­all you have ever done for me and for Allan—­and, good-bye!”

“Good-bye!”

Though there was no hint of unkindness in the old man’s voice, something formal in his manner had restrained the other from offering his hand.  Still loath to go without it, he said again more warmly: 

“Good-bye, sir!”

“Good-bye!”

This time he turned and went slowly down the dim hall, still making the careful folds in his hat, as if he might presently recall something that would take him back.  At the foot of the stairs he stopped quickly to listen, believing he had heard a call from above; but nothing came and he went out.  Still in the door upstairs was the old man—­stern of face, save that far back in his eyes a kind spirit seemed to strive ineffectually.

Across the lawn from her hammock Nancy called to Bernal.  He went slowly toward her, still suffering from the old man’s coldness—­and for the hurts he had unwittingly put upon him.

The girl, as he went forward, stood to greet him, her gown, sleeveless, neckless, taking the bluish tinge that early twilight gives to snow, a tinge that deepened to dusk about her eyes and in her hair.  She gave him her hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured heart.  After all, men were born to hurt and be hurt.

He sat in the rustic chair opposite the hammock, looking into Nancy’s black-lashed eyes of the Irish gray, noting that from nineteen to twenty her neck had broadened at the base the least one might discern, that her face was less full yet richer in suggestion—­her face of the odds and ends when she did not smile.  At this moment she was not only unsmiling, but excited.

“Oh, Bernal, what is it?  Tell me quick.  Allan was so vague—­though he said he’d always stand by you, no matter what you did.  What have you done, Bernal?  Is it a college scrape?”

“Oh, that’s only Allan’s big-hearted way of talking!  He’s so generous and loyal I think he’s often been disappointed that I didn’t do something, so he could stand by me.  No—­no scrapes, Nance, honour bright!”

“But you’re leaving—­”

“Well, in a way I have done something.  I’ve found I couldn’t be a minister as Grandad had set his heart on my being—­”

“But if you haven’t done anything wicked, why not?”

“Oh, I’m not a believer.”

“In what?”

“In anything, I think—­except, well, in you and Grandad and—­and Allan and Clytie—­yes, and in myself, Nance.  That’s a big point.  I believe in myself.”

“And you’re going because you don’t believe in other things?”

“Yes, or because I believe too much—­just as you like to put it.  I demanded a better God of Grandad, Nance—­one that didn’t create hell and men like me to fill it just for the sake of scaring a few timid mortals into heaven.”

“You know Aunt Bell is an unbeliever.  She says no one with an open mind can live twenty years in Boston without being vastly broadened—­’broadening into the higher unbelief,’ she calls it.  She says she has passed through nearly every stage of unbelief there is, but that she feels the Lord is going to bring her back at last to rest in the shadow of the Cross.”