“And now let me go home to my neglected girls,” she said, after an interval.  “You have a busy night ahead of you, and your press boys will be here any minute.”

But first she took a sheet of yellow copy paper, and wrote on it, “One year of silence.  August thirtieth to August thirtieth.”  “Is this inclusive?” she asked, looking up.

“Exclusive,” said Barry, firmly.

“Exclusive,” she echoed obediently.  And when she had added the word, she folded the sheet and gave it to Barry.  “There is a little reminder for you,” said she.

Barry went down to the street door with her, to watch her start homeward in the sweet summer darkness.

“Oh, one more thing I meant to say,” she said, as they stood on the platform of what had been the old station, “I don’t know why I haven’t said it already, or why you haven’t.”

“And that is, Madam—?” he asked attentively.

“It’s just this,” she swayed a little nearer to him—­her laughing voice was no more than a whisper.  “I love you, Barry!”

“Haven’t I said that?” he asked a little hoarsely.

“Not yet.”

“Then I say it,” he answered steadily, “I love you, my darling!”

“Oh, not here, Barry—­in the street!” was Mrs. Burgoyne’s next remark.

But there was no moon, and no witnesses but the blank walls and shuttered windows of neighboring storehouses.  And the silent year had not, after all, fairly begun.