Again and again in imagination I clasped you to my breast, I felt your kisses on my lips,--just as I afterwards felt them in reality."

He paused a moment and dropped the hand he had taken. Under cover of the shadows Kate's tears were falling unchecked; one, falling on Darrell's hand, had warned him that there must be no weakening, no softening.

His voice was almost stern as he resumed. "For those few hours I forgot that I was a being apart from the rest of the world, exiled to darkness and oblivion; forgot the obligations to myself and to others which my own condition imposes upon me. But the dream pa.s.sed; I awoke to a realization of what I had done, and whatever I have suffered since is but the just penalty of my folly. The worst of all is that I have involved you in needless suffering; I have won your love only to have to put it aside--to renounce it. But even this is better--far better than to allow your young life to come one step farther within the clouds that envelop my own. Do you understand me now, Kathie?"

"Yes," she replied, calmly; "I understand it from your view, as it looks to you."

"But is not that the only view?"

She did not speak at once, and when she did it was with a peculiar deliberation.

"The clouds will lift one day; what then?"

Darrell's voice trembled with emotion as he replied, "We cannot trust to that, for neither you nor I know what the light will reveal."

She remained silent, and Darrell, after a pause, continued: "Don't make it harder for me, Kathie; there is but one course for us to follow in honor to ourselves or to each other."

They sat in silence for a few moments; then both rose simultaneously to return to the house, and as they did so Darrell was conscious of a new bearing in Kate's manner,--an added dignity and womanliness. As they faced one another Darrell took both her hands in his, saying,--

"What is it to be, Kathie? Can we return to the old friendship?"

She stood for a moment with averted face, watching the stars brightening one by one in the evening sky.

"No," she said, presently, "we can never return to that now; it would seem too bare, too meagre. There will always be something deeper and sweeter than mere friendship between us,--unless you fail me, and I know you will not."

"And do you forgive me?" he asked.

She turned then, looking him full in the eyes, and her own seemed to have caught the radiance of the stars themselves, as she answered, simply,--

"No, John Darrell, for there is nothing to forgive."

_Chapter XVII_

"SHE KNOWS HER FATHER'S WILL IS LAW"

Though the succeeding days and weeks dragged wearily for Darrell, he applied himself anew to work and study, and only the lurking shadows within his eyes, the deepening lines on his face, the fast multiplying gleams of silver in his dark hair, gave evidence of his suffering.

And if to Kate the summer seemed suddenly to have lost its glory and music, if she found the round of social pleasures on which she had just entered grown strangely insipid, if it sometimes seemed to her that she had quaffed all the richness and sweetness of life on that wondrous first night till only the dregs remained, she gave no sign. With her sunny smile and lightsome ways she reigned supreme, both in society and in the home, and none but her aunt and Darrell missed the old-time rippling laughter or noted the deepening wistfulness and seriousness of the fair young face.

Her father watched her with growing pride, and with a visible satisfaction which told of carefully laid plans known only to himself, whose consummation he deemed not far distant.

Acting on the suggestion of his sister, he had been closely observant of both Kate and Darrell, but any conclusions which he formed he kept to himself and went his way apparently well satisfied.

At the close of an unusually busy day late in the summer Darrell was seated alone in his office, reviewing his life in the West and vaguely wondering what would yet be the outcome of it all, when Mr. Underwood entered from the adjoining room. Exultation and elation were patent in his very step, but Darrell, lost in thought, was hardly conscious even of his presence.

"Well, my boy, what are you mooning over?" Mr. Underwood asked, good-naturedly, noting Darrell's abstraction.

"Only trying to find a solution for problems as yet insoluble," Darrell answered, with a smile that ended in a sigh.

"Stick to the practical side of life, boy, and let the problems solve themselves."

"A very good rule to follow, provided the problems would solve themselves," commented Darrell.

"Those things generally work themselves out after a while," said Mr.

Underwood, walking up and down the room. "I say, don't meddle with what you can't understand; take what you can understand and make a practical application of it. That's always been my motto, and if people would stick to that principle in commercial life, in religion, and everything else, there'd be fewer failures in business, less wrangling in the churches, and more good accomplished generally."

"I guess you are about right there," Darrell admitted.

"Been pretty busy to-day, haven't you?" Mr. Underwood asked, abruptly, after a short pause.

"Yes, uncommonly so; work is increasing of late."

"That's good. Well, it has been a busy day with us; rather an eventful one, in fact; one which Walcott and I will remember with pleasure, I trust, for a good many years to come."

"How is that?" Darrell inquired, wondering at the pleasurable excitement in the elder man's tones.

"We made a little change in the partnership to-day: Walcott is now an equal partner with myself."

Darrell remained silent from sheer astonishment. Mr. Underwood evidently considered his silence an indication of disapproval, for he continued:

"I know you don't like the man, Darrell, so there's no use of arguing that side of the question, but I tell you he has proved himself invaluable to me. You might not think it, but it's a fact that the business in this office has increased fifty per cent. since he came into it. He is thoroughly capable, responsible, honest,--just the sort of man that I can intrust the business to as I grow older and know that it will be carried on as well as though I was at the helm myself."

"Still, a half-interest seems pretty large for a man with no more capital in the business than he has," said Darrell, determined to make no personal reference to Walcott.

"He has put in fifty thousand additional since he came in," Mr.

Underwood replied.

Darrell whistled softly.

"Oh, he has money all right; I'm satisfied of that. I'm satisfied that he could have furnished the money to begin with, only he was lying low."

"Well, he certainly has nothing to complain of; you've done more than well by him."

"No better proportionately than I would have done by you, my boy, if you had come in with me last spring when I asked you to. I had this thing in view then, and had made up my mind you'd make the right man for the place, but you wouldn't hear to it."

"That's all right, Mr. Underwood," said Darrell; "I appreciate your kind intentions just the same, but I am more than ever satisfied that I wouldn't have been the right man for the place."

Both men were silent for some little time, but neither showed any inclination to terminate the interview. Mr. Underwood was still pacing back and forth, while Darrell had risen and was standing by the window, looking out absently into the street.

"That isn't all of it, and I may as well tell you the rest," said Mr.

Underwood, suddenly pausing near Darrell, his manner much like a school-boy who has a confession to make and hardly knows how to begin.

"Mr. Walcott to-day asked me--asked my permission to pay his addresses to my daughter--my little girl," he added, under his breath, and there was a strange note of tenderness in the usually brusque voice.

If ever Darrell was thankful, it was that he could at that moment look the father squarely in the face. He turned, facing Mr. Underwood, his dark eyes fairly blazing.