seemed a long time since she had left the hills, and this glimpse of cities had given her many things to think and dream about.  Would she always live in Coniston?  Or was her future to be cast among those who moved in the world and helped to sway it?  Cynthia felt that she was to be of these, though she could not reason why, and she told herself that the feeling was foolish.  Perhaps it was that she knew in the bottom of her heart that she had been given a spirit and intelligence to cope with a larger life than that of Coniston.  With a sense that such imaginings were vain, she tried to think what the would do if she were to become a great lady like Mrs. Duncan.

She was aroused from these reflections by a distant glimpse, through the trees, of Mr. Robert Worthington.  He was standing quite alone on the edge of the park, his hands in his pockets, staring at the White House.  Cynthia half rose, and then sat down and looked at him again.  He wore a light gray, loose-fitting suit and a straw hat, and she could not but acknowledge that there was something stalwart and clean and altogether appealing in him.  She wondered, indeed, why he now failed to appeal to Miss Duncan, and she began to doubt the sincerity of that young lady’s statements.  Bob certainly was not romantic, but he was a man—­or would be very soon.

Cynthia sat still, although her impulse was to go away.  She scarcely analyzed her feeling of wishing to avoid him.  It may not be well, indeed, to analyze them on paper too closely.  She had an instinct that only pain could come from frequent meetings, and she knew now what but a week ago was a surmise, that he belonged to the world of which she had been dreaming—­Mrs. Duncan’s world.  Again, there was that mysterious barrier between them of which she had seen so many evidences.  And yet she sat still on her bench and looked at him.

Presently he turned, slowly, as if her eyes had compelled his.  She sat still—­it was too late, then.  In less than a minute he was standing beside her, looking down at her with a smile that had in it a touch of reproach.

“How do you do, Mr. Worthington?” said Cynthia, quietly.

“Mr. Worthington!” he cried, “you haven’t called me that before.  We are not children any more,” she said.

“What difference does that make?”

“A great deal,” said Cynthia, not caring to define it.

“Cynthia,” said Mr. Worthington, sitting down on the beach and facing her, “do you think you’ve treated me just right?”

“Of course I do,” she said, “or I should have treated you differently.”

Bob ignored such quibbling.

“Why did you run away from that baseball game in Brampton?  And why couldn’t you have answered my letter yesterday, if it were only a line?  And why have you avoided me here in Washington?”

It is very difficult to answer for another questions which one cannot answer for one’s self.