Not now, John--not now! Don't hate me! Let us be as we have always been--please, John! You would not refuse me if you knew." He had started forward to take her in his arms; to insist that now every obstacle was removed she should give him at once the lawful right to protect her, but she had shrunk back, the palms of her hands held out as barriers, and before he could reason with her Martha had entered with something for little Archie, and so the interview had come to an end.
Then, still absorbed in his thoughts, his eyes suddenly brightened and a certain joy trembled in his heart as he remembered that with all these misgivings and doubts there were other times--and their sum was in the ascendency--when she showed the same confidence in his judgement and the same readiness to take his advice; when the old light would once more flash in her eyes as she grasped his hand and the old sadness again shadow her face when his visits came to an end.

With this he must be for a time content.
These and a hundred other thoughts raced through Doctor John's mind as he sat to-night in his study chair, the lamplight falling on his open books and thin, delicately modelled hands.
Once he rose from his seat and began pacing his study floor, his hands behind his back, his mind on Jane, on her curious and incomprehensible moods, trying to solve them as he walked, trusting and leaning upon him one day and shrinking from him the next.

Baffled for the hundredth time in this mental search, he dropped again into his chair, and adjusting the lamp, pulled his books toward him to devote his mind to their contents.

As the light flared up he caught the sound of a step upon the gravel outside, and then a heavy tread upon the porch.

An instant later his knocker sounded.