SUDDENLY it dawned upon them that they loved one another. They had been talking about mind-reading, and he had looked long and steadily into her eyes when she had challenged him to read her thoughts. They realized simultaneously what had happened. She had known that she loved him, and he, that he loved her. But each had sought to keep that knowledge from the other. Now they could hide it no longer.

They remained silent for a long time, avoiding each other’s gaze. At last their eyes met.

He said, “Well?” His voice expressed nothing; in his eyes there was sorrow and—hope!

She shook her head, and he turned away his eyes; there was disappointment in them that he would not show. Then she said, very quietly, “You have read my thoughts?”

“Yes,” he said, still without looking at her; “and you—”

“I have read yours.”

Tears were in her eyes. If his, too, were wet, she could not see, for he was looking fixedly at a little pebble at her feet. At last he said, passionately, “Oh, why did I meet you! Why should I suffer so?”

“And I?” she said. “Is it not worse for me? Is not my sin greater, and therefore my punishment heavier, than yours? Oh,”—in answer to an impatient gesture of denial,—“you will meet some woman whom it will not be a sin to love, and you will—”

“You know I will not,” he interrupted.

“Yes, you will,” she said, very gently; “and then—”

He raised his head and gazed steadily at her. Then he said, challengingly, “You wish me to love another?”

She looked away from him and was silent. Gradually there crept into his eyes a look of hope; and hope was slowly turning into exultation when she spoke, so softly that he barely could hear her, “Yes.”

Then he said, altogether too calmly, in too commonplace a manner, “Oh, very well, since you wish it—”

And she said, very firmly, “I wish it!”

Slowly they returned to the house. The sun was setting, and there was gold and nacre and glowing blood in the sky. In the garden the wind stirred the leaves gently, and there was sorrow in their song.

Her husband awaited them. “Is n’t it a beautiful sunset?” he said to them from the piazza. “I suppose you’ve been looking at it. You might write a sonnet about it, my boy.”

She went up to the gray-haired man and kissed him on the lips, and leaned against him, until he wound his arm about her waist, and she rested her head on his shoulder caressingly; and then she looked defiantly at the young man, who had drawn near.

The young man’s hands closed tightly, and in his eyes there was disappointment and anger and some contempt. “Yes, John, I believe I could write a few elegies on the death of this Sun, who has shed his blood in his fight with Night, and has spattered it all over the sky, so that the angels will have to wash it off with their tears. Sunsets are my forte, anyway—”

“I have never seen any of your verses,” she said.

“Then you may congratulate yourself upon your lucky escape.”

The gray-haired man smiled good-naturedly and patted her cheek; and she held it up to be kissed, and nestled closer to him. Then she looked at the young man, and in her eyes there was still defiance, and, though she would not have shown it, some interest. She said, “I have heard so much about them that I should like to read them.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You are reckless.” And the bantering tone did not hide from her the significance that lay behind his words.

“You must show some of them to her,” said the gray-haired man to him.

“All right. I’ll hunt them up, some time, and send them to you,” said the young man to her.

“Have n’t you any here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied; “but they are all love songs, and therefore not worth the reading.”

“Indeed!” she said. The gray-haired man patted her cheek indulgently. This time she did not upturn her face for a kiss. And in her voice there was an unnecessary indifference as she said to the young man, “Will you let me read them to-night?”

“Oh, no,” he replied, laughingly, though his eyes were serious.

“Why not?” she persisted.

“In the first place, because they are not worth anything; and then you might get an impression that I really meant what I wrote, and that I am deeply in love with some one.”

“And you are not in love?” There was a challenge in her voice. The gray-haired man smiled at her girlish, artless curiosity.

“Certainly not!” the young man said decidedly.

“But were you in love when you wrote them?”

“I really don’t know,” he answered. “Perhaps I was.”

“Well, I am,” she said, looking at him steadily. And when his eyes had shown astonishment and had begun to shine with irrepressible hope, she continued: “Indeed I am,—with my own dearest husband, who is so good to me. Am I not, darling?” And she entwined her arms about the gray-haired man’s neck and kissed him on the lips twice. And the gray-haired man laughed and looked pleased.

The young man’s face was rigid and very pale. In the dusk they could not see that his lips were twitching. But she had grown strangely quiet.

A great stillness had fallen upon the world. The evening star was shining very brightly now, and in the east a little lone star was blinking tremulously.

Presently she said, “I am afraid,” and shivered.

The gray-haired man drew her closer to him, kissed her, and said: “Afraid of what, little coward? But come, it is time to go in, my child.”

The young man’s thoughts had been many during the brief spell of silence that had preceded her words, and now he said: “Yes, little sister, you ought to go in now.”

The gray-haired man laughed good-naturedly at this jest of his young brother’s. But she drew a quick breath and went into the house hurriedly.

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