"And yet I would rather you did not stay away a moment longer than you can help!" "Don't fear!" and she smiled.

"You cannot be a bit more anxious for me to come back than I am to come back myself! Good-bye! It's only for a day!" She waved her hand as the train steamed out of the station, and he watched her sweet face smiling at him to the very last, when the express, gathering speed, rushed away with her and whirled her into the far distance.

A great depression fell upon his soul,--all the light seemed gone out of the landscape--all the joy out of his life--and he realised, as it were suddenly, what her love meant to him.
"It is everything!" he said.

"I don't believe I could write a line without her!--in fact I know I wouldn't have the heart for it! She is so different to every woman I have ever known,--she seems to make the world all warm and kind by just smiling her own bonnie smile!" And starting off to walk part of the way back to Weircombe, he sang softly under his breath as he went a verse of "Annie Laurie"-- "Like dew on the gowan lyin' Is the fa' o' her fairy feet; And like winds in simmer sighin' Her voice is low an' sweet Her voice is low an' sweet; An' she's a' the world to me; An' for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doun and dee!" And all the beautiful influences of nature,--the bright sunshine, the wealth of June blossom, the clear skies and the singing of birds, seemed part of that enchanting old song, expressing the happiness which alone is made perfect by love.
Meanwhile, no adventures of a startling or remarkable kind occurred to Mary during her rather long and tedious journey.

Various passengers got into her third-class compartment and got out again, but they were somewhat dull and commonplace folk, many of them being of that curiously unsociable type of human creature which apparently mistrusts its fellows.