“Oh, where are you going?” she cried, for his face frightened her.

“To the devil!” was the consoling answer.

For a minute Jo’s heart stood still, as he swung himself down the bank toward the river, but it takes much folly, sin or misery to send a young man to a violent death, and Laurie was not one of the weak sort who are conquered by a single failure.  He had no thought of a melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time up the river than he had done in any race.  Jo drew a long breath and unclasped her hands as she watched the poor fellow trying to outstrip the trouble which he carried in his heart.

“That will do him good, and he’ll come home in such a tender, penitent state of mind, that I shan’t dare to see him,” she said, adding, as she went slowly home, feeling as if she had murdered some innocent thing, and buried it under the leaves.  “Now I must go and prepare Mr. Laurence to be very kind to my poor boy.  I wish he’d love Beth, perhaps he may in time, but I begin to think I was mistaken about her.  Oh dear!  How can girls like to have lovers and refuse them?  I think it’s dreadful.”

Being sure that no one could do it so well as herself, she went straight to Mr. Laurence, told the hard story bravely through, and then broke down, crying so dismally over her own insensibility that the kind old gentleman, though sorely disappointed, did not utter a reproach.  He found it difficult to understand how any girl could help loving Laurie, and hoped she would change her mind, but he knew even better than Jo that love cannot be forced, so he shook his head sadly and resolved to carry his boy out of harm’s way, for Young Impetuosity’s parting words to Jo disturbed him more than he would confess.

When Laurie came home, dead tired but quite composed, his grandfather met him as if he knew nothing, and kept up the delusion very successfully for an hour or two.  But when they sat together in the twilight, the time they used to enjoy so much, it was hard work for the old man to ramble on as usual, and harder still for the young one to listen to praises of the last year’s success, which to him now seemed like love’s labor lost.  He bore it as long as he could, then went to his piano and began to play.  The window’s were open, and Jo, walking in the garden with Beth, for once understood music better than her sister, for he played the ‘Sonata Pathetique’, and played it as he never did before.

“That’s very fine, I dare say, but it’s sad enough to make one cry.  Give us something gayer, lad,” said Mr. Laurence, whose kind old heart was full of sympathy, which he longed to show but knew not how.

Laurie dashed into a livelier strain, played stormily for several minutes, and would have got through bravely, if in a momentary lull Mrs. March’s voice had not been heard calling, “Jo, dear, come in.  I want you.”