“If the war lasts long, we shall have to shut our factories.”

“That is not a pleasant thought, John.  Let us put it aside this lovely morning.”

Yet she kept reverting to the subject, and as all men love to be inquired of and to give information, John was easily beguiled, and the breakfast hour passed without a word that in any way touched the sorrowful anxiety in his heart.  But at length they rose and John said,

“Jane, my dear, come into the garden.  We will go to the summer-house.  I want to speak to you, dear.  You know——­”

“John, I cannot stay with you this morning.  There will be a committee of the ladies of the Home Mission here at eleven o’clock.  I have some preparations for them to make and if I get put out of my way in the meantime I shall be unable to meet them.”

“Is not our mutual happiness of more importance than this meeting?”

“Of course it is.  But you know, John, many things in life compel us continually to put very inferior subjects before either our personal or our mutual happiness.  A conversation such as you wish cannot be hurried.  I am not yet sure what decision I shall come to.”

“Decision!  Why, Jane, there is only one decision possible.”

“You are taking advantage of me, John.  I will not talk more with you this morning.”

“Then good morning.”

He spoke curtly and went away with the words.  Love and anger strove in his heart, but before he reached his horse, he ran rapidly back.  He found Jane still standing in the empty breakfast-room; her hands were listlessly dropped and she was lost in an unhappy reverie.

“Jane,” he cried, “forgive me.  You gave me a breakfast in Paradise this morning.  I shall never forget it.  Good-bye, love.”  He would have kissed her, but she turned her head aside and did not answer him a word.  Yet she was longing for his kiss and his words were music in her heart.  But that is the way with women; they wound themselves six times out of the half-dozen wrongs of which they complain.

The next moment she was sorry, Oh, so sorry, that she had sent the man she loved to an exhausting day of thought and work with an aching pain in his heart and his mental powers dulled.  She had taken all joy and hope out of his life and left him to fight his way through the hard, noisy, cruel hours with anxiety and fear his only companions.

“I am so sorry!  I am so sorry!” she whispered.  “What was the use of making him happy for fifty-nine minutes, and then undoing it all in the sixtieth?  I wish—­I wish——­” and she had a swift sense of wrong and shame in uttering her wish, and so let it die unspoken on her closed lips.