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Rh went on. "Has Gray Peter died, and have I been under Hal Dozier's rifle only to speak to you?" He suddenly recalled himself.

"No, no! I have come to give you a wedding present,"

He watched her color change.

"Are you angry? Is it wrong to give you a present?"

"No," she answered in a singular, stifled voice.

"It is this watch." It was a large gold watch and a chain of very old make that he put into her hand. "It is for your son," said Andrew.

She stood up; he rose instinctively.

"When I look at it I'm to remember that you are forgetting me?"

A little hush fell upon them.

"Are you laughing at me, Anne?"

He had never called her by her name before, and yet it came as naturally upon his lips as a child's name, say, comes upon the tongue of its playmate.

She stood, indeed, with the same smile upon her lips, but her eyes were fixed and looked straight past him. They were dim and obscured by moisture. And presently he saw a tear pass slowly down her face. Her hand remained without moving, with the watch in it exactly as he had placed it there. A great awe came upon Andrew. All before he had felt that he was the master with the upper hand while they talked together.

But now she wept, and his heart was humbled. It shocked him and crushed him with a feeling that in her were motives so deeply drawn, flowing from sources so remote that he could never have understood her even if she were to speak. All that mysterious power which is womanhood came upon him and about him like still and holy things—the whisper of rain in the evening when