There was no answer, no sign. Katharine sat rigid and speechless.
"It would be fairer to tell me," he said, "fairer and kinder. Believe me."
"Yes; I have fallen in love with the stranger," she answered gently; and as she thought of him afresh, the tears streamed down her cheeks.
Willy Tonedale watched her a moment.
"Well, my dear," he said, "I can't pretend to be glad; but, of course, you had to love some one sooner or later—even I knew that."
"I wish I had something else to tell you, Willy," she said simply, "something to make you happy; but I can't help myself, can I?"
"No, my dear," he said in a low voice. "'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' And you have never been anything except your own frank splendid self to me."
"It came over me the moment I saw him," Katharine said, half to herself. "I knew nothing about him, but I seemed to have come suddenly out of a lonely wilderness—such a lonely wilderness—and found him. Then I heard part of his history, and it filled me with great pity, as it does now. And then we met again in the hotel. It was so strange that we should meet there, each knowing nothing of the other. And yet it seemed natural to be together; it seemed almost to be the continuation, not the beginning, of something. And then—that's all, Willy. He has gone his way."
"He will never forget you," Willy said dreamily. "He could not if he wished."