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“It is very nice to have you back again, Dick.”

He continued without seeming to hear her, and his voice shook with tenderness: “Here this moment I can’t believe these years have been; I think we have never been separated—”

“It certainly doesn’t seem four years,” said Alice sympathetically, but coolly.

Dick said nothing for a minute; his eyes hung on her downcast lids, waiting for an answering beam of love, but one never came.

“You remember,” he said at last, in a calmer voice, “you remember the old days? and our promises? and how we parted?” He was going on, but Alice interrupted him by withdrawing her hand from his and rising from her chair.

“Dick,” said she, kindly enough, “don’t speak of them, especially not now but don’t speak of them at all. We can’t have childhood over again; and I was a child then of seventeen. I am grown up now, and altered; and you of course you have altered too.”

“Oh Alice!” the turning of the door handle made him break off short, and add in a quick whisper, “I may speak to you to-morrow?”