Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/103

 ing at him with her deeply expressive eyes.

She looked back at the vials and noticed that his hand trembled as it moved over them, and his voice trembled, too, as hands and voices have trembled since time immemorial when young men have felt their time is growing short.

In the west the sun had fallen below the horizon and the magic glow of the sunset fell on the valley below, which waited, hushed and expectant, for the greater glory of color to come. As Neil went on talking, it seemed to Charlotte that her heart had never been so full, that she had never been so near to understanding the Greatest Sum of All—that Sum which starts in the sunset and which never, never ends.

It was Neil's voice which broke the spell: "And when I'm getting, say, twenty-five a week, sure, you can quit this school-teaching and we'll get mar-