“I hoped you were going to church,” he said.  “I wanted to walk with you.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” Gertrude answered.  “I am not going to church.”

She had shaken hands with him; he held her hand a moment.  “Have you any special reason for not going?”

“Yes, Mr. Brand,” said the young girl.

“May I ask what it is?”

She looked at him smiling; and in her smile, as I have intimated, there was a certain dullness.  But mingled with this dullness was something sweet and suggestive.  “Because the sky is so blue!” she said.

He looked at the sky, which was magnificent, and then said, smiling too, “I have heard of young ladies staying at home for bad weather, but never for good.  Your sister, whom I met at the gate, tells me you are depressed,” he added.

“Depressed?  I am never depressed.”

“Oh, surely, sometimes,” replied Mr. Brand, as if he thought this a regrettable account of one’s self.

“I am never depressed,” Gertrude repeated.  “But I am sometimes wicked.  When I am wicked I am in high spirits.  I was wicked just now to my sister.”

“What did you do to her?”

“I said things that puzzled her—­on purpose.”

“Why did you do that, Miss Gertrude?” asked the young man.

She began to smile again.  “Because the sky is so blue!”

“You say things that puzzle me,” Mr. Brand declared.

“I always know when I do it,” proceeded Gertrude.  “But people puzzle me more, I think.  And they don’t seem to know!”

“This is very interesting,” Mr. Brand observed, smiling.

“You told me to tell you about my—­my struggles,” the young girl went on.

“Let us talk about them.  I have so many things to say.”

Gertrude turned away a moment; and then, turning back, “You had better go to church,” she said.

“You know,” the young man urged, “that I have always one thing to say.”

Gertrude looked at him a moment.  “Please don’t say it now!”

“We are all alone,” he continued, taking off his hat; “all alone in this beautiful Sunday stillness.”

Gertrude looked around her, at the breaking buds, the shining distance, the blue sky to which she had referred as a pretext for her irregularities.  “That ’s the reason,” she said, “why I don’t want you to speak.  Do me a favor; go to church.”

“May I speak when I come back?” asked Mr. Brand.

“If you are still disposed,” she answered.

“I don’t know whether you are wicked,” he said, “but you are certainly puzzling.”

She had turned away; she raised her hands to her ears.  He looked at her a moment, and then he slowly walked to church.