"It would be no harm just to say a word," he thought.

"Why shouldn't she know--no matter if she can never care herself--that I care?
It would not trouble her.

No, I am a fool to think of it,--I won't.") "But it is so early for you to be out alone," he said.

"Do you take care of her, Max ?" "Max is a most constant friend," Lois replied; "he never leaves me." Then she blushed, lest Gifford should think that she had thought he was not constant.
But Gifford's thoughts were never so complicated.

With him, it was either, "She loves me," or, "She does not;" he never tormented himself, after the fashion of women, by wondering what this look meant, or that inflection, and fearing that the innermost recesses of his mind might be guessed from a calm and indifferent face.
"You see the old chimney ?" Lois said, as they drew near the small ruin.
"Some mushrooms grow right in on the hearth." It was rather the suggestion of a ruin, for the walls were not standing; only this stone chimney with the wide, blackened fireplace, and the flat doorstones before what was once the threshold.