Katrine | Page 8

in charge. Only I think that perhaps
such times as he is himself some work might be found for him. It is so
peaceful here; I do not want to go away."
"You shall not go away."
The words were spoken quietly, but for the first time in her life Katrine
Dulany felt there was some one of great power to whom she could turn
for help, and her woman heart thrilled at the words.
"You mustn't feel about it as you do, either," Frank continued. "The
time has gone by for thinking of your father's trouble as anything
except a disease--a disease which very frequently can be cured."
"Ah!" she cried, "do you think it would be possible?"
"I have known many cases. Is your father good to you?" he asked,
abruptly.
"Sick or well, with money or without, he is the kindest father in the
world. Save in one way, it is always for me he thinks."
Her hand lay on the log. It was small and white, and she was very
beautiful. Frank had seldom resisted temptation. This one he did not
even try to resist, and he placed his hand over hers.
"Katrine," he said, "I am not a particularly good man, but the gods have
willed that we meet--meet in strange moods and a strange way. I am a
better man to-night than I have ever been in my life. It's the music,
maybe, or the fringed gentian, or the whippoorwills." There was
love-making in every tone of his voice. "Whatever it is, it makes me

want to help you. May I? Will you trust me?"
She turned her hand upward, as a child might have done, to clasp his,
looking him full in the eyes as she did so.
"Utterly," she said.
"I have not always been considered trustworthy," he explained, lightly.
"People may not have understood you." There was a sweet explaining
in her voice.
"Which may have been, on the whole, fortunate for me," he answered,
with a curious smile.
"Don't," she said--"don't talk of yourself like that. I know you are good,
good, good!"
"Thank you," and again there came to him the throb in the throat he had
felt when their eyes first met. "Believe me," he said, "I shall always try
to be--to you," and as he spoke he raised her hand to his lips and kissed
it.
A noise startled him. Some one was approaching with uncertain
footsteps and a shuffling gait, and at the sound the girl's face turned
crimson.
"Katrine, little Katrine, where are you?" a voice cried, thickly and
uncertainly, as a man came from under the gloom of the trees. There
was not a moment's hesitation. The child rose and put her arms around
the figure with a divine, womanly gesture, as though to shield him and
his infirmities from the whole world. It was the action of one ashamed
to be ashamed.
"Daddy," she said, laying her head against his shoulder, "this is Mr.
Ravenel!"

III
A KINDNESS WITH MIXED MOTIVES
In the walk home through the gloom of the night Frank Ravenel
thought of many things not hitherto considered in his philosophy. The
women whom he had known had presented few complexities to him.
That he should be giving a second thought to Katrine Dulany seemed
humorous; but the more he resolved to put her from his thoughts the
more vivid the memory of her became. He recalled his emotion when
their eyes first met, and the remembrance brought again the tightening
of the throat which he had on the hilltop. He could feel the clinging
pressure of the slender hand, could hear again the voice like a caress,
and her words, "You are good--good--good!" kept repeating themselves
somewhere in the recesses of his brain to the tune of an old song.
"Good!" he ejaculated. "God, if she only knew!"
He had stated to his mother at the outset of the walk that he had no
plans; but in reality his summer had been fairly well arranged before
his return, lacking only a few set dates to fill the time till October. The
party at Ravenel would be over in a fortnight, and then--the thought of
another woman who loved him and a certain husband yachting on the
Mediterranean crossed his mind for an instant with annoyance and a
little shame.
The girl on the hill had had a more disturbing effect than any one that
ever came into his life before. Looking down the vista of probable
events, he saw nothing but trouble for her if he remained at
Ravenel--saw it as reasonably and as logically as though he were
contemplating the temptation of another. An affair with the daughter of
his overseer, a very young person, was a manifest impossibility for him,