I do not love you." He took her hand, held it close for a moment, and then, without another look or word, put it tenderly down, and was gone.
So absorbed was he in painful thought that, passing down the long avenue with bent head, he did not notice, nor even see, a gentleman who, coming from the opposite direction, looked at him at first carelessly, and then searchingly, as he went by.
This gentleman, a man in the prime of life, handsome, stately, and evidently at home here, scrutinized the stranger with a singular intensity,--made a movement as though he would speak to him,--and then, drawing back, went with hasty steps towards the house.
Had Willie looked up, beheld this face and its expression, returned the scrutiny of the one, and comprehended the meaning of the other, while memory recalled a picture once held in his hands, some things now obscured would have been revealed to him, and a problem been solved.

As it was, he saw nothing, moved mechanically onward to the carriage, seated himself and said, "Home!" This young man was neither presumptuous nor vain.

He had been once repulsed and but now utterly rejected.

He had no reason to hope, and yet--perhaps it was his poetical and imaginative temperament--he could not resign himself to despair.
Suddenly he started with an exclamation that was almost a cry.

What was it?
He remembered that, more than two years ago, on the last day he had been with her, he had begged the copy of a duet which they sometimes sang.