I, too, must go on believing, and providing my own material, as had ever been my lot; all of which was why my dog seemed my most profitable companion at this time.

His every bark at a threatening baby-carriage a block away, each fresh time he believed sincerely that a rubber shoe was engaging in deadly struggle with him, taxing all his forces to subdue it, each time he testified with sensitive, twitching nostrils that the earth is good with innumerable scents, each streaking of his glad-tongued white length over yellowing fields designed solely for his recreation held for me a certain soothing value.

And when in quiet moments he assured me with melting gaze that I was a being to challenge the very heart of love--in some measure, at least, did my soul gain strength from his own.
To know as much as I have indicated had been unavoidable for one of any intuitive powers.

The change at once to be detected in Miss Kate's manner toward me confirmed my divinations without enlarging them.

Miss Katharine Lansdale was gone forever; in her place was a Miss Kate,--even a Little Miss to the eye,--who regarded me at first with an undisguised alarm, then with a curious interfusion of alarm and shyness, a little disguised with not a little effort.