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“But you said you would have given it yourself.”

“I said that, as officer of the day, I would have been compelled to do so. I could not have signed my certificate otherwise.”

She turns away in speechless indignation. What makes it all well-nigh intolerable is that he is by no means on the defensive. He is patient, gentle, but decidedly superior. Not at all what she wanted. Not at all eager to explain, argue, or implore. Not at all the tearful penitent she has pictured in her plans. She must bring him to a realizing sense of the enormity of his conduct. Disloyalty to Will is treason to her.

“And yet–you say you have kept, and that you value, that knot of blue ribbon that I gave you–or that you took–last summer. I did not suppose that you would so soon prove to be–no friend to Willy, or—-“

“Or what, Miss Nannie?” he asks. His face is growing white, but he controls the tremor in his voice. She does not see. Her eyes are downcast and her face averted now, but she goes on desperately.

“Well, never mind that now; but it seems to me that such friendship is–simply worthless.”

She has taken the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises his cap, turns, and leaves her.

Sunday comes and goes without a sight of him except in the line of officers at parade. That night she goes early to her room, and on the bureau finds a little box securely tied, sealed, and addressed to her in his well-known hand. It contains a note and some soft object carefully wrapped in tissue-paper. The note is brief enough:

“It is not easy to part with this, for it is all I have that was yours to give, but even this must be returned to you after what you said last night.

“Miss Nannie, you may some time think more highly of my friendship for your brother than you do now, and then, perhaps, will realize that you were very unjust. Should that time come I shall be glad to have this again.”

It was hardly necessary to open the little packet as she did. She knew well enough it could contain only that

“Knot of ribbon blue.”

CHAPTER IV.

“THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME.”

June is here. The examinations are in full blast. The Point is thronged with visitors and every hostelrie in the neighborhood has opened wide its doors to accommodate the swarms of people interested in the graduating exercises and eager for the graduating ball. Pretty girls there are in force, and at Craney’s they are living three and four in a room; the joy of being really there on the Point, near the cadets, aroused by the morning gun and shrill piping of the reveille, saluted hourly by the notes of the bugle, enabled to see the gray uniforms half a dozen times a day and to actually speak or walk with the wearers half an hour out of twenty-four whole ones, being apparent compensation for any crowding or discomfort. Indeed, crowded as they are, the girls at Craney’s are objects of boundless envy to those whom the Fates have consigned to the resorts down around the picturesque but distant “Falls.” There is a little coterie at “Hawkshurst” that is fiercely jealous of the sisterhood in the favored nook at the north edge of the Plain, and one of their number, who is believed to have completely subjugated that universal favorite, Cadet McKay, has been heard to say that she thought it an outrage that they had to come home so early in the evening and mope away the time without a single cadet, when up there at Craney’s the halls and piazzas were full of gray-coats and bell buttons every night until tattoo.