Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/285

 her, surrounded by a light of lost dreams, immeasurably beyond him, a hope that was past.

His face twitched with a twinge that seemed to strike from his heart. To Miss Morris, it was the face of a boy who had been disappointed in love, who had thrown away his career and left college because "someone" had taken the young hope out of his future and left him merely "living now"—as he had said—without plan, without ambition. She smiled, but tenderly, at the folly of it. How like him it was!

He was startled by the touch of her hand on his arm—the hand in which she held her gloves. He thought that she was giving them to him, and he took them absent-mindedly. "Put them in your pocket for me," she said. "I'm afraid I'll lose them."

He wondered why she was blushing.

He was to wonder at her again when they parted at the door of Mrs. Kahrle's boarding-house. "I've had such a good time," she said. "Have you? Have you been happy?" And when he assured her that he had been, she added: "That's good. I enjoyed myself so much." She shook hands, lingering with a manner of having something still unspoken. "Don't worry-about things—you know. They'll all come out right, won't they?"

"I hope so," he replied, puzzled.

"That's right," she said. "Good-bye." Her smile dwelt on him as if she were trying to say with her eyes some encouragement which she had, apparently, not put into words. "Good-bye—till to-morrow."