She stood watching him now, for she could see him a long way off across the level Links, and noticed that he stopped more than once to look at the golf-players.  He was a capital golfer himself, but had never any time to play.  Between his own studies and the teaching by which he earned the money to prosecute them, every hour was filled up.  So he turned his back on the pleasant pastime, which seems to have such an extraordinary fascination for those who pursue it, and came on to his daily work, with that resolute deliberate step, bent on going direct to his point and turning aside for nothing.

Fortune knew it well by this time; had learned to distinguish it from all others in the world.  There are some footsteps which, by a pardonable poetical license, we say “we should hear in our graves,” and though this girl did not think of that, for death looked far off, and she was scarcely a poetical person, still, many a morning, when, sitting at her school-room window, she heard Mr. Roy coming steadily down the gravel-walk, she was conscious of—­something that people can not feel twice in a life-time.

And now, when he approached with that kind smile of his, which brightened into double pleasure when he saw who was waiting for him, she was aware of a wild heartbeat, a sense of exceeding joy, and then of relief and rest.  He was “comfortable” to her.  She could express it in no other way.  At sight of his face and at sound of his voice all worldly cares and troubles, of which she had a good many, seemed to fall off.  To be with him was like having an arm to lean on, a light to walk by; and she had walked alone so long.

“Good-afternoon, Miss Williams.”

“Good-afternoon, Mr. Roy.”

They said no more than that, but the stupidest person in the world might have seen that they were glad to meet, glad to be together.  Though neither they nor any one else could have explained the mysterious fact, the foundation of all love stories in books or in life—­and which the present author owns, after having written many books and seen a great deal of life, is to her also as great a mystery as ever—­Why do certain people like to be together?  What is the inexplicable attraction which makes them seek one another, suit one another, put up with one another’s weaknesses, condone one another’s faults (when neither are too great to lessen love), and to the last day of life find a charm in one another’s society which extends to no other human being.  Happy love or lost love, a full world or an empty world, life with joy or life without it—­that is all the difference.  Which some people think very small, and that does not matter; and perhaps it does not—­to many people.  But it does to some, and I incline to put in that category Miss Williams and Mr. Roy.

They stood by the laurel bush, having just shaken hands more hastily than they usually did; but the absence of the children, and the very unusual fact of their being quite alone, gave to both a certain shyness, and she had drawn her hand away, saying, with a slight blush: