“Kate’s one of the best girls alive, but I feel toward her like a brother.  Besides, Anna, what have you been doing with those big brown eyes of yours?  Don’t you see that Kate and Lennox Sanderson are head over heels in love with each other?”

The pail of water slipped from Anna’s hand and sent a flood over David’s boots.

“No, no—­anything but that!  You don’t know what you are saying!”

Dave looked at her in absolute amazement.  He had no chance to reply.  As if in answer to his remark, there came through the outer gate, Kate and Sanderson arm in arm.  They had been gathering golden-rod, and their arms were full of the glory of autumn.

There was a certain assumption of proprietary right in the way that Sanderson assisted Kate with the golden-rod that Anna recognized.  She knew it, and falseness of it burned through, her like so much corrosive acid.  She stood with the upturned pail at her feet, unable to recover her composure, her bosom heaving high, her eyes dilating.  She stood there, wild as a startled panther, uncertain whether to fight or fly.

“You don’t know what a good time we’ve been having,” Kate called out.

“You see, Anna dear, I was right,” David said to her.

But Anna did not answer.  Sorrow had broken her on its wheel.  Where was the justice of it?  Why should he go forth to seek his happiness—­and find it—­and she cower in shame through all the years to come?

Dave saw that she had forgotten his presence; she stood there in the gathering night with wild, unseeing eyes.  Memory had turned back the hands of the clock till it pointed out that fatal hour on another golden afternoon in autumn, and Sanderson, the hero of the hour, had come to her with the marks of battle still upon him, and as the crowd gave away for him, right and left, he had said:  “I could not help winning with your eyes on me.”

Oh, the lying dishonor of it!  It was not jealousy that prompted her, for a moment, to go to Kate and tell her all.  What right had such vultures as he to be received, smiled upon, courted, caressed?  If there was justice on earth, his sin should have been branded on him, that other women might take warning.

Dave knew that her thoughts had flown miles wide of him, and his unselfishness told him that it would be kindness to go into the house and leave her to herself, which he did with a heavy heart and many misgivings.

Hi Holler had none of Dave’s sensitiveness.  He saw Anna standing by the gate, and being a loquacious soul, who saw no advantage in silence, if there was a fellow creature to talk to; he came up grinning:  “Say, Anna, I wonder if me and you was both thinkin’ about the same thing—­I was thinkin’ as I seen Sanderson and Kate passing that I certainly would enjoy a piece o’ weddin’ cake, don’t care whose it was.”

“No, Hi,” Anna said, being careful to restrain any bitterness of tone, “I certainly was not wishing for a wedding cake.”