He countered without replying: "Didn't you know how much I cared?"

"Yes, but my goodness, Les, must a girl entirely _shun_ a man to

prevent his falling--I mean, to keep him from caring too much?"

"Oh, no," he answered with a sharp sigh. "Don't mind me. Don't mind

anything I've said. I guess I'll get over it--especially since it

seems that you didn't feel at all the way I did, and I was merely

making a fool of myself." It was a cup of highly flavoured bitterness.

"Oh, please don't say such a thing as that! You know I told you all

along, Leslie, that I--that I had a friend in Arizona, and I--well, you

see I somehow felt you'd understand. I didn't know the things we did--I

mean I didn't realize our being together so much meant anything except

that we--well, that we liked each other and wanted to be together...."

She felt it was just a little lame, and began laying about for more

forcible expression. Meanwhile, Leslie muttered: "No, those things

never do mean any more, I guess."

"But Leslie, dear--"

She spoke unwisely. At the familiar word of affection, which had

thrilled him so often during the unmolested weeks--that wonderful span

shattered by the arrival of the letter from Arizona--Leslie momentarily

forgot about his dark humiliation. He forgot everything but the fact

of the woman beside him. He seized her swinging hand; gripped it. And

then they paused, further progress along the sun-flecked way seeming

inhibited by some subtle agent in league with the emotion which swept

over them both.

Oh, Eros! Are your agents everywhere?

From gripping her hand he unexpectedly and rather bafflingly had her

in his arms. And she presented, for just that charged moment, no

resistance, but relaxed there with a little inarticulate, troubled,

withal surrendering cry.

"Louise!"

"Oh, Les!"

When they had kissed he broke the curious spell by demanding, with

considerable passion, why, if she really did care, she was so willing

to throw him over for another man. It seemed a pivotal question.

It seemed an unanswerable one, even, in the light of what had just

occurred. But Miss Needham, now the spell was broken and she could

breathlessly begin getting hold of herself again, proved magnificently

equal to it. The beauty of the Needham logic was just that it could

always find an answer to every question, however pivotal--some kind of

answer, that is.

"Oh, Leslie!" she cried. "Don't you see? I'm _not_ throwing you over.

Not the way you want to make it seem. I care for you just the same

as--yes, as I ever did! Why shouldn't I?" she demanded, with vague

defiance. "Only I--I suppose some of the things we've done--what we

just did.... Well, and the other times, aren't--I suppose they wouldn't

be quite right if I'm to be formally engaged. But you see I--I've

looked upon this engagement--I mean I've looked upon it as not quite

settled yet...." She faltered and spoke more thickly, as though getting

down to cold facts somehow made the whole business a little tawdry.

"I'm not wearing any ring yet, you see," she went on, waving her hand

before them a trifle awkwardly, and laughing with constraint. "And as

long as Mr. Barry and I _aren't_ really engaged--not quite in the usual

way yet, I mean--I didn't see--I don't see now what harm there is in

making--well, new friends."

It was an amazing speech. It was a wonderful speech. He offered no

immediate reply to it. What could he say? The fact is, he had never

heard just such a speech as this in his life, and found himself,

not perhaps unreasonably, a little bit bewildered by it. None of

the lessons in feminine psychology he had learned thus far had just

prepared Leslie for such a speech as this. As abruptly as they had

paused, the two now resumed their walk. And from this moment his

attitude toward her was also altered.

Louise started slightly, as though for the first time fully realizing

what had just taken place. She glanced at her wrist watch. It was ten

minutes to five by the tiny dial.

"I hope we can make it," she said anxiously. The return to her former

preoccupations might have struck a disinterested observer as bizarre,

though of course Louise wasn't conscious of anything like that. She was

not conscious of anything bizarre at all. It was really extraordinary,

at times, how free from any blemish of self-consciousness she seemed

to be. This was her way: giving herself over entirely to one thing

at a time. Curiously enough, it even had something to do with what

has (carefully weighing values) been called her fundamental honesty;

though here, as so often with her, the true spring was not involved.

Concentration was one of the sturdy precepts expounded by the Rev.

Alfred Needham. The influence of this father was very strongly marked

in the daughter. But as for Leslie, he was keenly conscious, walking

beside her through the lovely forest of Betsey, of a shift which seemed

to him untimely and again humiliating. He grew reserved and cold;

walked along in silence. However, his thoughts were busy. And the more

he thought of it, the more convinced he was that that phrase of hers:

"I don't see what harm there is in making new friends," sounded a

warning which he must heed! Louise glanced again at her watch to make

quite sure she had read the hour aright.

"Les," she demanded, wholly consumed now with the apprehension lest she

miss her train, "is your watch with mine?"

"I have five minutes to five," he answered coldly, pressing open the

case of his old-fashioned heirloom watch and quickly snapping it shut

again. He snapped it as quickly as he could because he did not want to

let his eyes rest on the picture pasted inside the case.

"Do you think we can make it?"

"I've made it in less time, a good deal."

"Les," she entreated wanderingly as they emerged from the forest and

scudded through the sand to the boathouse where he kept his little

launch, "we simply _must_ be friends, whatever happens."

She studied, though abstractedly, the settling look of antipathy on his

face. She did not know what it meant, but instinctively she shuddered

at it just a little.

"Les, dear, you must let me be...."

His curiosity was aroused, and he broke with a heavy bluntness into the

groping silence. "What?"

"Why, I was just going to say you must let me be"--the inevitable

could not be restrained--"be like a sister to you...." And she smiled,

even through her troubled abstraction. She laid a hand on his arm. "I

know that sounds as though it came out of a book, but it expresses my

thought as well as I know how. You know--you see I'm a little older

than you--though I never think of that...."

Leslie dropped his arm, and her hand slid off. It fell to her side in

a limp way. She hardly noticed the fact, though. Her mind was swimming

with the strange contending forces which seemed, so inexplicably, to

compose her life. She seemed all at once not to see anything very

clearly....

They entered the boathouse, but Leslie had not replied to the generous

suggestion, and went with a moody briskness about the task of making

the small craft ready for the nine-mile voyage. Then he helped her in;

arranged a cushion or two. When he touched her there was a mitigated

flash of the old thrill. But the thrill seemed subtly palpitating,

now, with something else. It was a new and, oddly enough, a not

altogether disagreeable sensation. For the first time, though Leslie

didn't as yet clearly realize this, he was looking at Miss Needham

critically. He had certainly never looked at her this way before. He

noticed a tiny dash of powder she hadn't brushed off the collar of her

jacket; observed a very faint and unobtrusive hint of the Roman in her

nose. As for her nose, he merely wondered, as he coaxed the engine into

activity, that he hadn't marked the true line of the bridge before....

It took nearly an hour to reach Beulah, at the other end of Crystal

Lake. Louise, it fortunately developed, would make her train easily.

Leslie moored the launch, which had behaved surprisingly well, and

escorted his passenger through the tiny village to the railroad

station. Little talk sped between them. He asked at what hour the

expected steamer was due. Eight o'clock, she told him. He remarked

that there would be a good bit of time to consume after she arrived in

Frankfort, and she replied, in a mildly distracted way, that she didn't

mind. But she added, all the same, with a little petitioning, blind

burst: "I wish you were going the rest of the way with me!"

"I will if you want me to," he answered listlessly. Or was he feigning

listlessness by way of retrieving his rather severely damaged pride?

"Oh, no!" she cried, merely voicing the instinctive contradiction

which rose most naturally to her lips. The train was heard whistling

in the distance. Then she remembered something, and spoke with greater

assurance than had been displayed on her part since they left the

forest of Betsey. "You're expected back, you know, to play tennis. You

promised." She seemed almost relieved, in a way; yet she could not

resist, too, the little muffled dig. And there was also something dark

lurking beneath both the relief and the dig.

"I promised?"

"Didn't you tell Hilda you'd be back in time for the match?"

"Oh--yes," he admitted.

"So you see," she laughed, "you had no thought of going on any farther

than Beulah!"

His just expressed willingness to accompany her the rest of the way had

depended directly upon her own sufficiently vehement exclamation: "I

wish you were going!" But the way she laughed seemed to imply a kind

of duplicity in him which brought a flush to his face. And he reminded

her, with glacial tones: "You told me all along I could only take

you as far as Beulah. You were very positive about it." The kindling

distrust did not die out of his eyes.

"Yes, I understand, Les. It's all right. Hilda will be watching for

you."

Suddenly the train came into view around a bend. Louise unconsciously

straightened her hat and tugged at her gloves, as though Lynndal Barry

were to be met aboard the cars instead of emerging, ever so much later,

from the boat in Frankfort.

"Good-bye, Les," she said warmly.

"Good-bye."

"Thank you so much for bringing me."

He nodded away the obligation. Then the train started, and Leslie

turned back toward his launch.

A feeling of great and wholly unexpected tenderness came upon Louise.

She leaned far out of the car window to wave. He looked back, saw her,

and waved also; then sauntered coolly on toward the dock.

4

When Louise and Leslie walked together through the forest of Betsey

they had not as a matter of fact passed entirely unobserved.

Hilda, after her sister had gone downstairs, didn't remain long in bed.

Right on the heels of that cloudy fear lest Mr. Barry fail to arrive

and Louise's heart be a second time broken, there flashed, for Hilda,

a fine little campaign in her own behalf. Hilda's education in the

great school of love was already quite well launched. Of course she

was as yet graded rather intermediately. But Hilda was an alert and

ambitious young student. She told herself it would be very much worth

while to observe how an engaged lady behaved in the company of other

men. Louise was a pattern for her in so many ways--both papa and mama

kept insisting. Why not in this also? She might very possibly have need

of the lesson some day. However, the real, specific, if not exactly

admitted impulse behind her nimble relinquishment of bed was the plain

desire just to see Leslie.

It did not take Hilda long to dress. For one thing, of course, she

dressed very simply up here in the wilderness. Louise dressed simply

also, but not so simply as Hilda. However, there was a reason for

this--a reason of which Hilda was fully cognisant, and one to which she

was perforce reconciled. Age made all the difference in the world. She

consoled herself with enormous bows on her jumpers, but also with the

promise that there would come a day when she, too, would dress less

simply, even in the wilderness.

Hilda was listening at the head of the stairs when her sister went

up to the "tea-house" to summon Leslie. While the lower part of the

cottage was thus momentarily vacant, the girl stole down, making

comical faces of deprecatory concern at each separate creak. Then

she sped quickly out of the house and off through the thicket in a

direction oblique with the path which Louise and Leslie were later

to take. Hilda's little by-way struck over two low hills and spilled

itself recklessly into the broader road used by the cottagers of

Betsey, at a point about a quarter of a mile along, toward Crystal Lake.

She was an odd, inquisitive child, and had a genuine passion for

watching the great world spin. Wherever was the most going on, there

you would generally find Hilda, an earnest observer, if age or

circumstance unfortunately forbade her active participation. She knew

far more about the people who summered at Point Betsey than any one

dreamed. Hilda had a hammock strung up in an invisible bower just

beyond the spot where the little path lost itself. There was only a

dust-powdered screen of boughs and bushes between it and the road.

The hammock, handed down to her when the Rev. Needham invested in a

fine new one for the cottage, had seen more than a season of unroofed

service, and was consequently rather inclined to be stringy. It was, in

point of fact, a very dilapidated hammock indeed. But Hilda esteemed it

highly. She thought it a very estimable hammock--had a real affection

for it. Hers was happily the age when rags are royal raiment--without

the solemn, limiting balance of that sublime and classic exclamation.

She reached this secret nook quite out of breath. Of course there was

no real need for all this haste. She knew there wasn't. But youth does

not loiter on such errands. She flung herself down in the hammock and

for a time lay still. It was cool here, and hazy with dawn. To one side

of her the scrub thicket, sprinkled with sturdier growth, lay almost

stygian; to the other side was the Betsey road, a bright, tortuous band

of morning, threading the Betsey woods as though it were the path of

some exploring courier of Sol. Through the flimsy façade of leaves the

light of morning streamed into Hilda's bower with a mistily tempered

shine. Though ample, this screen afforded plenty of peepholes; and

naturally Hilda knew them all. If a storm threshed through the forest

and wrenched wisps of woodbine into a different position, or whipped

the heavier undergrowth into a new pattern, temporary or permanent

as the case might be, the girl was quick to perceive the new order of

things and to train her eye to the altered scope of vision. She lay now

in the hammock, regaining her breath, and swung herself gently back and

forth with the aid of a stout wild grape tendon.

There was a great deal of wild life all about her: birds and squirrels

and chipmunks and queer little humming, whirring, chirping insects.

Some seasons certain of the cottagers brought up household cats with

them from town, when it might be observed that the birds and squirrels

were much less in evidence--much more wary and reserved in their

deportment. But as it chanced, this year there wasn't a cat on the

Point, and the woods were full of day-long frolic.

Hilda had some time to wait. The two persons on whom her innocent

espionage was designed, loitered, as we have seen, through their

breakfast; and the little girl was almost ready to persuade herself

that Louise and Leslie must have taken the much longer, circuitous

northern route, when suddenly she heard their voices.

They appeared to be talking softly, as though still imbued with

dawn-cautiousness, even where there was no longer the possibility

of disturbing any one's slumber. Hilda, lying there so still and

expectant, saw them walking together along the road. Leslie's eyes

pursued the ground he was treading, but Louise was glancing anxiously

up at him.

"You would think we couldn't even be friends any more," she was saying.

And then Hilda heard the lad beside her mutter: "Friends!"--in that

tone that appeared to embody so much....

"I'm sure we'll always be the best sort of friends, Leslie," Louise

said warmly.

And then they were almost beyond hearing. However, Hilda caught

Leslie's thick communication about going back to the city, and it

troubled her a good deal. She slipped out of the hammock and peeped

through the shielding leaves. She thought to herself: "How well they

look together!" And she seemed suddenly full of a vague unhappiness.

Out of a subsequent observation: "Louise always looks well with men,"

Hilda did not for some reason or other, glean the poor ounce of

consolation, regarding Leslie, that might appear nestling there.

She left her bower and returned to the cottage in a rather soberer

mood, along the open road they had so recently traversed.

The summer rising of the parent Needhams regularly occurred about

seven. In town, during the season of lengthened nights, the household

was suffered to slumber perhaps a half hour longer; but matinal

"dawdling," as the Rev. Needham put it, was a symptom of decadence

to be scrupulously shunned. The Rev. Needham had a rather definite

persuasion that all the people in the East inclined towards late

rising. He had a theory that a day well begun was bound to end well. It

didn't, as a matter of fact, so far as he was concerned--at least there

was nothing at all dependable about it; but these collapses, these

drab failures of the real to coincide with the ideal, these sloughings

off from a kind of Platonic scheme of perfection, constituted what

stood as perhaps the reverend gentleman's most distinguishing quality.

Here was a man marked for a kind of almost rhythmic disaster. The

wheel of life never ran smoothly, but kept bumping over sly pebbles

of chagrin and disappointment. The Rev. Needham was like a Middle Age

(or perhaps early Chinese) delinquent, strung up for chastisement,

his arms pinioned to a beam overhead, and the mere points of his toes

permitted to touch the ground. An inch or a few inches relaxed, and

he would be all right. If he could only get his heels down! But that,

alas, was just the trouble with the Rev. Needham: however dignified

and calm he might appear externally, there never was, there never

could seem to be, an entire and sincere consciousness of solid ground

under his feet. Sometimes he would sigh: "Ah, at last!" But anon there

would be a devilish tingling in the heels, which would remind him that

they were still upreared. The poor man's destiny seemed eternally a

thing suspended. It dangled and flopped, like a rope's end in nervous,

persistent gusts.

Anna Needham relinquished sleep at the hour specified by her spouse

cheerfully, as a rule, though there were also occasions when raillery

and even discreet rib-proddings entered into the program. Mrs. Needham

was, of course, well inured to these regularities of routine, just as

her very fibre was toughened and moulded to the ministerial caliber

generally. Fundamentally, she was a person of slightly less strenuous

tendencies than her husband. Anna Needham was the type of woman whose

life is very largely shaped, as is her destiny largely determined, by

the man with whom she lives. Her nature was naturally somewhat more

amenable than his. Still, she had her distinct rebellions, too. She

could take a stand of her own in an hour of crisis. The Rev. Needham's

was a nature that did not weather storms any too well. Yes, in time of

storms Anna was the more seaworthy. For one thing, perhaps, she had

fewer ideals. Thus she did not experience quite such blasting shocks

over upheavals and cataclysms. But it must be confessed that this

apparent stability was touched, perhaps one might say, rather, a little

diluted by a few parts moral or intellectual laziness. Comparative

criticism of the Needhams, husband and wife, usually fell into two

major divisions. There were, in other words, two factions: those

who maintained she was less profound than he, and those who would

insist that she had more common sense. But that they were economically

well-mated seemed pretty generally accepted. It was a coalition in

which appeared the very minimum of waste, since one was always ready

(or in her case perhaps merely inclined) to shut off the spigot of the

other's temperamental excesses.

On this particular July morning there wasn't a hint of friction over

the proposition of getting up. The Rev. Needham began his brisk,

determined stretching at the first stroke of seven. Anna lay passive

till the last stroke; but as the strident and spiteful clangour of

the Dutch clock downstairs resolved back again into a monotonous

though hardly less crabbed _tick_-tock, _tick_-tock, the lady yawned

deeply and with just a concluding gurgle of relish. There was a guest

already in the house, another guest on the way. Hostesses, however soft

the bed, aren't likely to surrender to tempting inertia under such

circumstances.

As a matter of fact, the bed was not a very soft one. Or rather, it

was very soft in places and very hard in others. Perhaps one of the

enduring charms of small resort cottage life is the amusing inequality

of things. The best and the worst hobnob. Lo, here is a true democracy!

And virtues utterly commonplace in your urban ménage may very easily be

given a most heavenly lustre in the wilderness.

"Well, Anna," he said, in his best tone of fresh, early morning

cheerfulness, "I guess it's time to get up."

"Alf, you don't mean to tell me that was _seven_!"

She had counted the strokes; but it was customary to have a little

conversation about the time of day before arising: a sort of pleasant,

innocuous tongue-limbering, a lubrication of the way to more important

themes later on. Such gentle, indirect prevarications may perhaps be

looked upon indulgently, even when, as in this case, they crop out in

clerical families.

The Rev. Needham proceeded to dress and shave.

He was in a good, confident, substantial mood today; rose singing. The

Rev. Needham was very apt to arise with song in his mouth, bravely

defying the chance of his going to bed with a wail. This morning the

selection was that fine old _Laudes Domini_ which seemed peculiarly

appropriate, both fitting the hour and reflecting the joyous state of

the singer's heart.

"When morning gilds the skies

My heart awaking cries:

'May Jesus Christ be praised!'"

The Rev. Needham had a tenor voice of fair quality, though not

altogether true of pitch. In the wilderness, so far from pipe organs,

pitch however, dwindled to comparative unimportance. It was the

_spirit_ of song that counted.

Now, one might observe that in this hymn the Rev. Needham would come

out very full and strong on the more purely ecstatic lines (such, for

instance, as depict the spread of morning across the heavens, the

awaking of a fervent heart, etc.), and that, almost invariably, those

more climactic, particularly the more ecclesiastical, lines would

issue a little muffled, as the singer found it urgent to immerse his

head in the washbowl's morning plunge, or apply a towel vigorously,

or perhaps bend suddenly over to lace up his shoes--by this movement

naturally cutting down the egress of breath. They were subtly odd,

these mufflings. It was almost as though Fate had determined sedulously

to deny to this unfortunate man an indulgence in his very life-mission:

praising his Maker! For another than he the intervals of competition

might very easily have fallen less saliently. Yes, another would

have found it possible to cloud over, if necessary, the heavenly

gilding and would have been suffered to come out free, triumphant,

on the diviner phrases. But not the Rev. Needham. No, alas, not he.

It was a part of the Rev. Needham's destiny that the better and more

satisfying arrangement of life must be withheld, or temporarily awarded

only to be broken rudely off. Inquiry ought to pause here. Yes, it

delicately and righteously and above all humanely ought. No, it ought

not to lead one away, fiendishly to lure one on to a certain door in

one of the three-quarters partitions, beyond which the slumber of a

human being was giving place, at this stage, to the more irregular

sounds signifying a return to consciousness. Ah, better to leave out

altogether the thought of any mortal responsibility for the muffling;

better to cling decently just to the adverseness of an obdurate Fate.

And yet, the tenor of the conversation which now ensued between the

Rev. Needham and his wife might favour the suspicion--let us call

it by no stronger name--that the person beyond that door in the

three-quarters partition _had_ something to do, however slightly, with

the matter of vocal emphasis.

"Anna," he asked softly, "do you suppose your sister's awake yet?"

"I don't know, Alf. Perhaps I'd better go tap on her door."

"Oh, well, I wouldn't disturb her just yet. Eliza is always late with

breakfast." He sighed as he beat up the lather in his mug. "We can't

expect things to run along quite as smoothly as when we're just by

ourselves."

"I told Marjie we made a practice of getting up at seven," said Mrs.

Needham a little anxiously. She slipped a coloured silk petticoat over

her head and tied its tape strings round her waist. Mrs. Needham was

growing a bit stout. "She told me if I didn't hear her moving around

I'd better tap on her door."

"It's this air, I suppose, makes people sleep so," he remarked. And

then he added, displaying a strong touch of nervousness in his tone: "I

think, Anna, your sister is changed, somehow."

"You think so, Alf? How?"

"Well, I don't know. Perhaps it's our not being used to her after so

many years."

"You may be right, Alf. But she talked real sensibly to me yesterday.

We had quite a long talk in the afternoon, while you and Hilda were out

after berries. She seems real sensible, Alf. Of course she does say

things--"

"Yes, she makes remarks, Anna, that I could rather prefer our girls not

to hear."

"You mean like what she said at dinner about the natives of Tahulamaji?"

"Yes--things like that." And then he confessed with a nervous little

gesture: "I can't seem to figure out where Marjory stands any more. She

talks with a freedom.... Anna, I don't think I ever heard any one talk

just the way Marjory does."

"You mean--about religion, Alf?"

"Well," he resumed, "it may be her way. But I can't say I ever knew a

woman to talk like that. I think Marjory's very good-hearted. She no

doubt means the best in the world. But somehow...." He turned toward

his mate, poising the razor in the air. He looked, without of course

suspecting it, almost terrible. But he went on with merely the same

inflection of nervous timidity: "Anna, there are times when I suspect

she doesn't believe the way we do any more."

"Oh, Alf--do you mean--is it as though she'd gone into some other

church?"

"Well, I don't know." He resumed his shaving in a troubled, fidgety way.

"Alf," she said solemnly, standing in the centre of the room with her

hands on her hips, where they paused in the act of adjusting the band

of her skirt, "Alf, you--you don't think she isn't a _Christian_ any

more?"

The Rev. Needham nervously cut himself a little. He laid down the razor

with a startled sigh.

"Anna," said he, "how do _I_ know? If it _is_ true, then it's one of

the things I've always dreaded so--having atheism break out right in

the family!"

"Oh, Marjory _can't_ be one of those people!" her sister cried

earnestly. "Alf, we ought not to judge her so harshly. She's lived in

foreign countries so long that I suppose she's kind of gotten into new

ways of speaking. She talked so sensibly yesterday, Alf--I kept wishing

you could have been there to have heard."

"Well, Anna," he said quietly, "Marjory's your sister, and, whatever

the facts, naturally I've nothing to say."

"You try and have a good talk with her, Alf. I never felt you two

understood each other very well. She don't talk so flippantly when

there aren't other people around. I'll fix it so you two can be alone

together. Oh, Alf," she concluded, almost piteously, "Marjie may have

gone into another church, but I _can't_ believe she's drifted any

farther!"

"I hope not, Anna." He tried to speak with an air of charitable calm;

but the impression conveyed seemed rather that a disturbance of his own

convictions was troubling his heart than that he was primarily moved

with concern over his sister-in-law's spiritual well-being.

All persons with whom he came in contact influenced the Rev. Needham.

They influenced him one way or another, however transiently. In fact,

when it came to that, there was seldom what one would call any really

permanent influence exerted. Contacts with life merely kept him hopping

back and forth or up and down. They augmented, were perhaps more

largely than anything else responsible for, the poor man's perpetual

inner unrest. He could not seem to settle down to cool, steady views;

could not feel his soul impregnably at peace. But then, in this regard

he seemed, though perhaps in a rather acutely pointed fashion, logical

fruit of his time.

To be, for the moment, quite ruthless in one's musing upon him,

what would the world say if it could really pry into the tumultuous

inner consciousness of the Rev. Needham? Might the world call him

melodramatic, stagy? Could it actually be brought against this minister

that he was, in a sense, theatrical? What a blow--and at the same

time what a terrific coup of irony; for the Rev. Needham would be the

very first himself to cry out against any such trait as staginess!

Staginess, he would say, must certainly have something to do with the

so-called "culture." But the world could never bring this charge

against the Rev. Needham, because the world, one realizes with an

instinctively grateful sigh, was denied the license of prying inside.

No, to the world this minister appeared a being not essentially removed

from the usual run of beings. The world by no means thought of him as

a Chinese or Dark Age delinquent strung up for punishment in such a

manner that his heels were perpetually off the floor. He might not,

perhaps, strike people as a man of intense and dynamic, of unfailingly

clean-cut personal persuasions about religion--or, for that matter,

perhaps, about anything else in life. Nevertheless, he scarcely stood

out as vivid or eccentric; scarcely like a sore thumb; because nobody

realized what he was really like inside.

But now, to return to cases, here was Marjory, his wife's own sister,

lodged right under his roof; and she baffled him. He couldn't deny

it--could not get away from it. Yes, she _baffled_ him. He felt nervous

in her presence. Sometimes when she would laugh, or look at him in a

certain way, it seemed to him--it seemed to him--why, as though he

didn't know where he stood any more....

Marjory Whitcom was his sister-in-law, one of the family; and at his

own hearthside, somehow, he could not feel quite free. He could not

feel cheery and at ease. And dimly it troubled the Rev. Needham to

realize that he felt this way.

5

That Miss Whitcom was indeed up and stirring became evident. They heard

her gaily calling out to Hilda, who was coming up the stairs.

"Dear child, see here a minute!"

Two doors opened then: hers, briskly wide; the Rev. Needham's a furtive

crack.

"Yes, Aunt Marjie?"

"Honey, there isn't any water in my pitcher--would you mind ...?"

"Oh, I'll fill it right away for you, Aunt Marjie!"

"Only half full, honey. I'd slip out myself to the pump, only I'm

afraid of shocking Eliza with my wrapper!"

"I won't be gone a minute, Aunt Marjie!"

She took the pitcher, extended by means of a plump bare arm, and sped

off with it.

"Alf," said Mrs. Needham, "I forgot to tell Eliza the pitcher would

have to be filled every day."

"I suspect Marjory is a bit wasteful of water," he observed.

Here at the Point there was water, water everywhere; yet the Needhams

employed far less of the fluid in their daily toilets than they did in

the town. This is perhaps not infrequently the case at summer resorts

of the more primitive kind, where one attains the frugal attitude

generally. Then, too, having to go out to a pump for water alters its

preciousness. Besides, as all the Needhams would argue: "We go in

bathing so often." So the pitchers weren't refilled _every_ day. They

were generally refilled about two or three times a week. Miss Whitcom's

pitcher, however, would have to be put in a class by itself. That was

only too clear.

The Rev. Needham tied his cravat before the dresser glass. A few tiny

drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead. "Yes," he sighed, "it

does upset things some."

"What say, Alf?" asked Anna, who was bending over an ancient trunk in

which clean linen was kept.

"I say, Eliza will just have to get used to filling her pitcher every

morning."

"I guess so," agreed Mrs. Needham, straightening, her face flushed.

She held a fresh towel in her hand, which he eyed with glancing

suspicion.

"I got to thinking," explained his wife. "Perhaps she's used to having

a clean towel every morning, too."

The minister compressed his lips almost imperceptibly as she went to

her sister's door, the towel over her arm. Hilda, with the pitcher of

water, arrived at the same moment, so that mother and daughter stood

with their respective burdens on Aunt Marjie's threshold, and even

spoke together, like rival hucksters proclaiming their wares.

"Gracious!" cried the favoured lady, opening her door and accepting the

alms. "Such magnificent service! Anna," she added, "don't you let me

put you out. I can easily live on the view. You really don't know what

this means, after being cooped up in a place like Tahulamaji!"

Miss Whitcom was tall, and rather fine looking. She was a trifle

taller, for instance, than her brother-in-law, and had a way, when any

discussion with him was in progress, of standing up quite close to the

minister, so that she created the illusion, a little, of towering over

him. She was not, of course, actually a great deal taller, but how one

could make the sly inch count at such times! Her sister looked almost

dumpy beside her.

"I suppose," observed Mrs. Needham, "you do feel kind of cooped up in

those foreign places." That phrase of hers "foreign places," was in

the nature of a stock term. It was expansive, elastic, comprehensive.

She spoke of foreign places a little as her husband spoke of the East

or of "culture." Neither had travelled any to speak of. In a sort of

whimsical way it seemed to Mrs. Needham that one might expect to find

Bombay and Peking supporting much the same conditions of life. Or

even Dublin and Rome, for that matter. "I don't suppose," she added,

"there's anything like this where you've been."

"I should emphatically say _not_," her sister assured her. "At

Rato-muh--that's the capital, you know--we've nothing but a dirty

little river. I'm dying for a glorious swim!"

"We go bathing nearly every afternoon, Aunt Marjie," Hilda announced.

"You do? Well, I'm with you!" She was just a trifle loud. "Do there

happen to be any convenient islands one could swim out to?"

"Oh, no, Aunt Marjie, there aren't," replied the girl regretfully,

almost with a touch of naïve apology.

"Well, no matter. You can always swim round in a circle, of course.

Only I do like having a definite goal."

And then she paused a moment, even suspending her toilet; for having

a goal--hadn't that been, with almost amusing steadfastness, her aim

all through life? Of course, it was quite true: there had been perhaps

a hundred goals, all told; but each, in its own way, and at its own

time, had seemed the golden, final one. And always so incorrigibly

_definite_. She had gone vibrantly and humorously on from one pursuit

to another, determination taking multiple form. And yet there appeared

now to have been, all along, just one permanent and unswerving

determination: not to marry O'Donnell.

Miss Whitcom sighed briefly and went on hooking herself up.

"Speaking of swimming," she continued. "I won a gold medal once. Yep.

A very long time ago."

"A medal for swimming, Aunt Marjie?"

The aunt nodded. "I entered a five-mile endurance and time. Entered

against thirteen men, and got there first!"

"Oh, how _wonderful_!" cried Hilda admiringly.

"Yes, it was wonderful," the other admitted; then frowned. "The only

trouble was that I had my subsequent doubts of its being really fair."

Mrs. Needham, who had been standing in the doorway, a faint and musing

smile on her lips, received the news of the swimming match with a

hurried comment about having to go down and see how Eliza was getting

on with breakfast. She was always, and especially with Alfred in mind,

mildly shocked at the glib way in which her sister talked about men.

"How do you mean it wasn't fair, Aunt Marjie?" demanded little Hilda,

sitting down eagerly on the edge of the bed.

"Came to suspect one of them."

"One of the men?"

"Um-hm."

"Of _cheating_, Aunt Marjie?"

"Um. Turning lazy at the finish."

"You mean he let you win?"

"Afraid so, Hilda."

"But I've heard papa say that women ought to be treated...."

"That men ought to go lazy at the finish and let you pull in ahead?"

"Of course papa never put it _that_ way. I don't believe he knows about

women going into regular contests like that, with men."

"I daresay not, Hilda. Such things wouldn't conspicuously have entered

into Alfred's training."

"What did you do when you found out about it, Aunt Marjie?"

"What do you mean--when I'd convinced myself he hadn't played fair?"

"Yes."

"Sent him the medal." She shrugged.

"You _did_!"

"Um. It belonged to him, not me. Yes, sir--it went right straight off

to him, with a polite note. The note was terribly polite. I told him I

hoped he'd get just lots of comfort out of it. Real, solid comfort."

And she snorted with wrath.

"_Then_ what did he say, Aunt Marjie?"

"Then he said--say, look here, Hilda, what _is_ your capacity for

asking questions?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Aunt Marjie! I didn't realize how many I was asking."

And she really was sorry. Nevertheless, her eyes continued to shine

very brightly. Aunt Marjie had a stimulating effect on Hilda--Hilda

being just at the age of hero-worship. This age, in the life of the

individual, is somewhat akin to the prehistoric age in human history;

it bristles with ever such fabulous things. And the only natural thing

to do when one encounters fabulous things is to ask as many questions

about them as one can think of.

But Marjory Whitcom hadn't, as a matter of fact, spoken with any

dominant impatience. She had asked Hilda's capacity for questions in

a spirit of ridicule which, in a conscious sense of boomerang satire,

amply included her own loquacious self. And yet, for all that, there

was a slight flush on her face. What brought the flush there? Ah, there

are deep things in the human heart. The flush lasted quite a long time.

Indeed, it had hardly faded out altogether when she was seated with the

family at breakfast.

The Rev. Needham asked the blessing in a faintly grim manner. He spoke

it off with a defiant assurance. His sister-in-law, he had just been

deciding, _wasn't_ to intimidate him at his own table. He kept his eyes

tight shut and spoke on almost doggedly. There were a number of graces

in the minister's repertory. He was in the habit of using now one, now

another. This morning, though the choice was, of course, as always,

entirely spontaneous and unconscious, he chose the shortest of them all.

Breakfast was simple and bountiful. The Needhams were rather hearty

eaters. There was no stomach trouble in the family, although very

strong emotions had, naturally, the same effect on them as on most

people. Following Louise's affair with Richard, as they remembered it,

the unhappy girl had eaten almost nothing for months--or it certainly

was weeks--and had grown extremely thin. In fact, during the first

week following the sad climax _none_ of the Needhams had eaten quite

normally, except little Hilda. She, only a child of twelve then, came

up regularly enough for second helpings, despite her sister's trouble

and the general depression of the household. Childhood is, when not

perverted, a blessed span, the heart seeming to stand entirely out of

touch with any of the homelier and more prosaic organs.

This morning there were wild raspberries--early ones, and not very

large--which the Rev. Needham and his younger daughter had themselves

gathered in the woods and along the sunny roadways the afternoon

previous, while Marjory was conversing sensibly with her sister. After

the fruit came a cooked cereal, which Mrs. Needham was annoyed to find

a trifle lumpy. And then after that there followed pancakes--pancakes,

pancakes--_hundreds_, it seemed, coming in three at a time, which was

the griddle's limit.

Just subsequent to the blessing, Aunt Marjie occasioned a very slight

flurry in the domestic arrangements by asking Anna if she might have a

glass of hot water.

"I'm supposed to drink it now," she explained, "before each meal. It's

living so long in the tropics, I suppose."

Mrs. Needham tinkled the bell for Eliza, and glanced, half

unconsciously, at her husband. The Rev. Needham, it is to be feared,

was growing rather opinionated about his wife's sister. There is, when

one stops to view the matter wholly without passion, nothing really

criminal in the request for a glass of hot water, just as there is

nothing essentially felonious about using all the water you want up

in your room. Of course, in such places as deserts it may often be

essential to employ circumspection; but scarcely on Point Betsey,

where there lay the vast resources of Lake Michigan behind even an

extravagant indulgence. And as for having the water hot, well, what are

kettles for? One poises the issue. Still, of course, such implications

as these are hardly fair to the Rev. Needham, who was animated by no

real spirit of parsimoniousness at all, but who merely disliked seeing

vaguely devastated the quiet, orderly routine of the house. To tell the

truth, while he didn't honestly grudge her the water, the clergyman

looked upon his sister-in-law as something of an intruder. However

legitimate it might be--and of course nobody could possibly deny that

Marjory had a perfect right to be here in their midst--intrusion still

was intrusion. The trouble was, he distrusted--all but feared her. And

when men fear others, they will often be found taking exception to

minor failings, real or fancied, which a sometimes surprisingly acute

vigilance discovers in those who inspire their fear. The Rev. Needham,

however, _said_ nothing: merely pressed his lips together, as he had

previously done before the mirror upstairs when informed that his

relative would have to have her pitcher refilled every morning. It was

these repressions which permitted the world at large no too salient

suspicion of what was really going on inside.

A pleasant, wholly unremarkable conversation was kept up. It wasn't the

sort of talk to invite preservation, but was, on the contrary, just a

normal and uneventful flow. True, there seemed an unwonted excitement

in the air. The day upon which Mr. Barry was to arrive must necessarily

be considered a red-letter day, and might even be expected, in a sense,

to deliver up talk of some special brilliance. But to tell the truth,

the great event had already been discussed in all its possible phases

and from all conceivable angles, there remaining at length absolutely

nothing but for Mr. Barry to put in an appearance.

Throughout breakfast the Rev. Needham maintained as consistent an

attitude of dignified prosperity, beneficence, common sense, and

scrupulously informal godliness as possible. Above all, he tried in

his demeanour to emphasize an unobtrusive yet firm head-of-the-house

bearing--and indeed succeeded, for the most part, so well as almost to

persuade himself that he _was_ master of his destiny, after all; that

his life was growing more solid, more dependable now.

Hilda, of course, chattered a great deal, after her wont, acquainting

her hearers, for one thing, with as full an account of Louise's early

departure as seemed politic. She blushed, mentioning Leslie. Miss

Whitcom noted that: noted it and sighed. It was obvious the blush was

no accident. Another young thing, just starting out; the rough and not

always so romantic world ahead of her--and boy-crazy! Marjory Whitcom

sighed again. So futile, she told herself. But another valuation just

slipped in: so sweet!

Toward the end of the meal, the pancake process, hitherto quite smooth

and regular, hitched very badly. No fresh cakes came in, and the supply

on the table dwindled alarmingly. The Rev. Needham affected not to

notice this. The management of the household, thank heaven! was not

on his shoulders. His burdens were the weightier and more important

_family_ matters--aside, that is, from the business of tending to his

own rather unmanageable soul and looking after his flock. There was a

great difference between household matters and family matters; pancakes

were not in his department; so that, not being himself responsible for

the present embarrassment, he could afford to keep up a very good and

cheerful front indeed, even when his eyes assured him the kitchen door

hadn't opened for fully five minutes.

Mrs. Needham flushed. She always grew more or less excited when there

was a break like this in the table service. As concerned her own plate,

she, of course, stopped eating, directly it began to look as though

the supply of cakes on the table could not possibly survive till there

was a reinforcement from the griddle. She nibbled heroically at the

cake already unavoidably on her plate, and suddenly began talking with

great animation.

Anna had always felt, obscurely yet unhappily, that her sister did

not consider her a really expert housekeeper. In the old days, before

weddings and deaths had disintegrated the family, it had always been

Marjory who could do things best and most handily. She had seemed a

very prize of domestic efficiency. Every one said Marjory would be

married off first. There were even unkind asides to the effect that

Anna would probably linger on and perhaps eventually run into perpetual

maidenhood. Ah, the queer pranks of life! Anna had been carried off

first, after all; and Marjory, the acknowledged flower, had gone all

these years unplucked.

Anna Needham was always anxious to make a good household impression

on her sister. Of course, many sorts of allowances would be made up

here at the Point. Still, there seemed no valid reason why the cakes

should cease coming in. At last she tinkled her bell. She tinkled it

resolutely. Her husband had just helped Miss Whitcom to the last cake.

Hilda still had unmistakably a hungry look.

Eliza opened the kitchen door and thrust in her head.

"Did you ring, ma'am?"

"Yes, Eliza, I did. We would like some more cakes."

"Yes, ma'am."

Eliza withdrew her head and closed the door. But while it yet remained

within their view, the face of Eliza had something dark and ominous in

it.

They heard her making desperate sounds about the stove. One minute,

two. Mrs. Needham grew more and more excited. She talked loudly and

steadily. The Rev. Needham sat with his hands on the arms of his chair,

like a statue of patience. Presently, however, he began to drum with

his fingers. Miss Whitcom, realizing the dilemma, adjusted herself to

it--made the last cake go a wonderfully long way.

Finally Mrs. Needham pushed back her chair, excused herself hurriedly,

and went out into the kitchen, the retreat being valiantly covered

by her sister, who began telling her brother-in-law fresh tribal

characteristics of the people of Tahulamaji.

Out in the smudge of the kitchen Anna Needham faced her cook.

"What is the _matter_, Eliza?"

Eliza was hot and hopeless. She pointed to the griddle upon which were

three cakes, still quite pasty, and which had obviously ceased baking.

"What is the matter with the stove, Eliza?"

"It must be the oil is all gone, ma'am."

"But I thought there was plenty to last until the morning delivery from

the store."

"Well, ma'am, when I came down I found two burners going, and there was

the remains of breakfast on the table. Did Louise go away somewhere

early?"

Eliza called the Needham girls quite simply by their first names. She

might have honoured them by saying Miss Louise and Miss Hilda. But she

hadn't begun that way. She hadn't done that at her last place, nor at

any of the other places which constituted her Middle Western retrospect

as a domestic; and Anna, in such comparatively unimportant matters as

this, found it less frictional to let instruction slide.

Louise had flown, leaving the burners on; there would be no more

pancakes for the remaining Needhams and their guest.

The Rev. Needham sighed, and somehow felt that the day was not

beginning so very well. However, Marjory began laughing in a singularly

hearty way.

"It reminds me," she grinned, "of something in an old melodrama I

saw years and years ago at an impossible little theatre. The 'comic

relief' was a tramp, whose weakness was the flask. He pretended, as I

recall it, to have palpitations of the heart, or something like that,

and at one stage of the proceedings went into a series of alarming

spasms, each of which would be instantly allayed by a swig from a flask

belonging to one of the other characters. The other character dared

not refuse the flask, for fear of fatal consequences, but eyed its

diminishing contents with profound regret. How well do I remember! At

length the tramp, in one of his worst spasms, was informed that the

whiskey was all gone; whereupon he very decently revived, looked out

at the audience soberly, and said, in his most mirth-provoking tones:

'Thank heavens there was just enough!'"

The Rev. Needham, as they left the table, looked at her in a half

startled way. These stories of hers were never in actually questionable

taste, yet they somehow contrived to upset him. There seemed to be

always something just behind them which might, as it were, spring out.

It was such he seemed to fear most of all: the things in life that

might spring out.

"Hilda," said Aunt Marjie, still chuckling over the whole affair, "did

you tell me Louise had a young man in the kitchen with her?"

"Yes, it was Leslie. But Aunt Marjie ...!"

"Ah, then that explains it!"

"Oh, but Aunt Marjie, Leslie isn't the one. You see, Louise is

_engaged_!"

"She is?" demanded the lady more seriously, yet mockingly, too, as

though the communication represented fresh news. "Well, then"--for Miss

Whitcom refused to be daunted--"the empty burners are no doubt all the

better accounted for, Hilda." She laughed again. Then she put her hands

on Hilda's young shoulders. "Hilda," she said with great solemnity,

"are you quite _sure_ Leslie isn't the one?"

Hilda blushed, and did not look squarely at her aunt, but instead a

little bit beyond her.

"Oh, _yes_!" she cried softly.

6

The first sunlit hours of the day fully realized the brave promise

of the dawn. The air was fresh and delicious, though inclined to

sultriness as one travelled inland away from the coast. The song of the

locust was shrill in the trees.

Louise's way took her a good distance from sea and then brought her

back to it again, circumlocutionary travel being one of the features

of Point Betsey existence. It might fantastically resolve itself into

a paradox: to go an inch you must go a mile. Her destination was the

town of Frankfort, situated about four miles south of the great stone

light-house and the cottages on the Point. The distance could easily

be covered on foot, the pedestrian taking his way along the smooth

curving beach of the "Big Lake." But Louise was rather a poor walker.

She preferred to lie in a hammock, or, if ground _must_ be covered, to

depend as largely as possible upon artificial locomotion. Those who

declined to walk and had no motor, must, to reach Frankfort, enlist the

respective conveyance of boat and train--an almost complicated journey.

There was a regular passenger ferry running on Crystal Lake, back and

forth between the resorts on the west shore and the village of Beulah.

This ferry boat, propelled by gasoline, was called the _Pathfinder_--a

name always preparing passengers new to the route for unimagined

nautical adventure. Passengers seemed cheerfully and nonchalantly asked

quite to take their lives in their hands, or rather, which might be

even worse, to sign them over entirely into the precarious keeping of

the boat's owner-pilot-engineer-and-fare-collector. And yet, after

all, there was nothing so very terrifying about a trip from one end of

Crystal Lake to the other. On the _Pathfinder_ Louise would doubtless

have travelled this morning but for the fact that the official ferry

service was never to be depended upon at so early an hour. Absence of

competition had led to a really deplorable state of independence, so

that Leslie's little boat was indeed a blessing at such times, in spite

of its general decrepitude. He escorted her, as we have seen, the first

nine miles of her journey, due east, away from Lake Michigan. Then

the train carried her nine miles back again, though somewhere in the

proceeding the four miles separating Frankfort and Point Betsey were

annihilated. The journey consumed something like an hour and a half.

Louise stepped out of the dilapidated coach. The station stood within

a few rods of the seashore--a situation once accommodating the

convenience of an enormous summer hotel, which a few years previous

had taken fire and vanished in smoke. With it had vanished also the

fondest hopes of the town. However, the ornate railroad terminus

still stood just where it had stood during the days of glory. Thank

God it was spared, for it had about it a relative magnificence which

the impoverished hamlet could ill afford to lose. It might, of course,

be more centrally located; still, there was a kind of grace in its sad

vigil.

Miss Needham, with considerable time to waste, surveyed the

age-softened ruins of the vast hotel and quite cheerfully revived, for

her amusement, memories of the time when she was Hilda's age and used

to come here to dancing parties and occasional dinners with her family.

She paced up and down upon what had once been the walk leading grandly

to the hotel from the wharves and the railroad station. Now the way was

rank with grass and weeds.

Ah, yes. She had promenaded here in that long-ago time, nor had she

walked alone, as she was walking now. Oh, no. And a slight flush,

even after all these years, crept into her face as she remembered

Harold Gates. Yes, he had walked beside her here, and they had talked

together of many things, and laughed a great deal. How she had laughed

in the old days! How gay they were! And over there on the channel

pier, close to the bowling alley, she had let Harold kiss her, also.

Before the summer was over she had let him kiss her rather a good many

times. Of course they did not really _love_ each other. They were only

just awfully good friends. Harold was residing in the hotel with his

parents. Louise only saw him when the Rev. Needham decided they would

go in to town and dine. Harold kept promising that he would come out

to the Point some day and see her, but he never came. Oh, yes--how

memories swarm back, once the tide of their return has set in! Yes,

once he did come; but it was only as a member of a picnic party from

the hotel. They brought baskets with them and had a fine revel on

the beach, quite near the Needham cottage. In the evening they built

a fire. But Louise saw her hero only for a moment on that occasion,

after all. They walked down the dark beach a little way, and he put

his arm around her, and she let him kiss her; but when he said he had

to go back to the fire again, there was naturally nothing to do but

let him go. The trouble was, he seemed to have a special girl in the

picnic party on whom his attentions must be lavished. So young, yet

already such a dashing man of the world! But for Louise it wasn't very

satisfying.

"What a fool I was!" she cried to herself, almost angrily, even at this

comfortable distance. And then she laughed: "What a _silly_ little

fool!"

Harold Gates was all nicely married and settled down now; a Chicago

girl, and they had a baby. Harold had mailed her a postcard with the

baby's picture on it, and across the bottom of the picture he had

written, in his firm business hand: "Merry Christmas from the three

Gates." Was it not strongly to be doubted whether Harold at length even

remembered how lover-like they had been that summer, he and she? Well,

it was rather to be hoped he didn't remember; and yet, with a queer

little pang for just a moment, Louise thought she couldn't endure his

having _entirely_ forgotten....

Well, she had certainly been free enough with her affections in those

days! Yes, she had been very free. As Louise quitted the ruins (which

had an odd, symbolic aspect this morning) and wandered off along the

beach, snatches of the prodigality of her past flared up, distressing

her, thrilling her a little, filling her heart with gloomy though not

exactly acute aversion. Ah, she thought, the kisses that had been spent

in vain! And yet they had not seemed entirely in vain at the time--not

all of them, at any rate.

From a glancing inventory of those more trifling indulgences of

her early days, she soared to the vastly more vital affair with

Richard. That, indeed, was different. Yes, that was another matter

altogether. Richard was her first real lover. The others were mere

boy-sweet-hearts, or they were, like Harold Gates, just awfully good

friends. Richard had always seemed mature to her: a _man_. She had

always felt herself a woman in his presence. Their affair, wretchedly

as it had turned out, was undeniably animated by the love that flashes

between men and women. It had a new tenseness, a new dizziness, a new

depth. It was magnificent and gripping; had the true ring of authority

and surrender in it. Yes, it was a thing of intense intoxication, and

maintained, so far, at least, as she was concerned, an unfaltering

white heat.

"And yet--for him," she told herself as she walked close beside

the little waves, "it wasn't like that. No, it couldn't have been,

even--even during those wonderful times, when we...." And she flushed,

as though not even solitude were an utterly dependable guardian of her

crimson thoughts. She lowered her eyes, lest impartial nature suddenly

be caught up into an impersonation which should cry shame against her.

Oh, yes. She had given her whole heart to Richard. Almost, almost....

She shuddered. "What a terrible thing it is!" she told herself. "What

a terrible thing, being deceived in a man! But how is one to know? How

can one always tell?"

Ah, how indeed? She went on a little way, thinking darkly and arriving

nowhere.

"And yet," she wavered, a look of intenser and clearer pain drifting

into her eyes, "he was--so dear! Ah...."

If Richard were suddenly to come toward her out of the past; if he were

to come toward her here, along this brown beach; if he should hold out

his arms to her and bid her to come back.... No, no! She clasped her

hands, for it was all so real. "No, no," she whispered. "I would not go

back. I would not _dare_ go back." She had seen him coming toward her

many times in fancy, stretching out his arms to her, speaking to her

after his wont. And she had learned to play out her prohibiting side of

the terrible ordeal so faithfully, so often, that at length the only

emotion she felt was that sense of dullness that goes with things which

are irrevocable.

"No, Richard," she would say. "I gave myself to you once. You might

have had me then. But not now. It is too late."

She would dismiss him, calmly and sorrowfully; would permit her tongue

to utter no words other than these. And yet.... She walked slowly

along, pondering her life.

What changes had come with the years! What changes! Now her heart was

given to another man. This was another sort of love, another sort

altogether. Lynndal and Richard were so unlike! Louise wondered whether

the love of any two men could be so strikingly unlike as she saw the

love of Richard and of Lynndal to be. Indeed, it rather pleased her,

as she set them off, one against the other, that the distinction

should be so great. It seemed to argue an indeterminate yet quite

thrilling variety in herself--not of course, a mere vulgar facility in

shifting or adapting herself to types as chance flitted them across her

horizon--ah, no!--but a real sense of _understanding_, a genius for

grasping the salient elements in many men, a cleverness in appraising

their worth. She bolstered her troubled and ghost-ridden heart.

Lynndal was the opposite of Richard, in every way--in every way, that

is, except that he, too, loved her. No, she would say in _every_ way,

for she knew now that Richard had never really cared, while Lynndal,

that was certain, cared very deeply and enduringly.

Her heart quickened now as she thought of her lover. She began

reviving, in a happy, drifting way, the slender accumulation of

noteworthy items in their romance, hers and Lynndal's: thought of their

first meeting, in the lobby of the hotel in Arizona, when she was with

her father on one of his infrequent "business" trips. The Rev. Needham

owned a little property in the great dry-farming district of Arizona.

"This is my good friend Mr. Barry," her father had said. And she had

said she was pleased to make his acquaintance, and she had given him

her gloved hand. She had thought little about him at the time. And

that, perhaps more tellingly than anything else, argued the palpable

differences. For Richard she had loved at first sight. He had captured

her, madly and hopelessly, alas, quite at the outset. Not so Lynndal.

Oh, no.

Louise was much given to musing and contemplation of this sort, which

often took, as now, an odd conversational expression.

"I didn't love Lynndal at all, in the first place," she told herself,

as though this were the first really definite understanding of the

case. "I didn't begin to care until the week was half over. But I saw

_he_ cared. I knew that I attracted _him_ from the beginning."

And then she left the beach and strolled up into the village.

Three couples passed by, arm in arm, youth and maiden, going for a

promenade on the pier. They deported themselves in just the customary

Middle Western summer resort manner. The couple ahead would confer in

whispers. Then a simultaneous laugh would disturb the lazy stillness of

the street. And then it might be that the girl would turn as she walked

and whisper something in the ear of the girl behind her, who would

laugh out also, at whatever it was the young man ahead had originally

confided to his partner. And the companion of this second young lady

would look bored and very much left out, while perhaps the young man

behind him might mockingly exclaim that secrets in company weren't

polite. Then the next minute all six would be singing the chorus of

some contemporary rag. And when that was done there would be another

chorus. Or else the young lady ahead would shout back to the young lady

in the rear and demand of her in tones of such vehemence that they

could be shared by all the town, whether she'd heard from John yet--or

Harry or Jim or Robert, as the case might be. Whereupon the young man

in the middle, who had been mocked by the young man in the rear, would

very likely turn and grin, feeling, if rather obscurely, that the

frivolous odds of the hour were now more evenly distributed.

Louise glanced at these careless, gay young persons as they passed, and

a feeling of comfortable security crept into her heart.

"Well, I'm glad I'm past all _that_!" she thought with a sigh. "They

all act this way at one time or another, and it's certainly a blessing

when it's over!"

She turned and looked after the noisy spooners as they bent their steps

toward the pier. Suddenly, it seemed for no reason at all, she thought

of Leslie. He seemed, quite vividly, to be right here beside her for

a moment. It was ever so curious. She wondered why she should think

of him so vividly just at this moment. Presently it occurred to her

the reason was simply that Leslie, though so young, wasn't boisterous

and silly, like the hoodlums she had just passed. No, she could not

fancy his ever having behaved like that in his life. Nor could she

conceive of his having yet to go through any such gauche, vapid

period. With her he had always been very serious. Of course, she was a

little older. But Leslie's whole nature was serious, she argued, and

somehow--somehow _deep_. She was in the mood now, perversely, to do him

the most elaborate justice. Yes, she thought he might be called, in a

way, really deep. Certainly she had never known any one like him. She

did not, just then, consider that she had never known any one just like

Richard, either, when it came to that--or even any one like Harold

Gates. All she could seem to think of, for the moment, was that Leslie

had come to fill a unique place in her life.

A feeling of tenderness crept upon her. Yes, they had grown intimate

during the short span of their acquaintance. She had been rather

lavish. It was Leslie's first summer on the Point. Vaguely she wished

it might all have been otherwise, that he might have come into her life

sooner, or that.... Ah, what was it she wanted?

His voice seemed suddenly ringing in her ears, as it had rung when he

cried: "Friends!"

And she sighed.

Oh, Eros, wicked god! She is waiting for one lover, and you torment her

with others! You revive for her sweet, irrevocable loves of the past,

when one would think the present love enough....

7

Louise looked at her watch. It was half past seven. The day was clear

and beautiful. Out against the marine horizon stood a ship. That must

be Lynndal's. It would be in at eight. She decided she would stroll

down the length of the main street and then return to the wharf.

Although the hour was still so early, the little town displayed about

as much life as it ever did. There were women with baskets on their

arms, examining produce displayed in the few shops where supplies were

procurable. There were carefree resorters already about, enjoying a

freshness which must soon evaporate under the scourge of the mounting

sun. The main street boasted a good many quaint little curio shops,

which somehow managed to do a living business. A typical drowsy

Northern Michigan small town--not much of a town, yet of course

infinitely better than no town at all.

Louise, as she walked down the one business street of the place,

scarcely looked to right or left. She knew every nook and angle of the

town--at least so she believed. Having come up now so many summers,

wasn't it reasonable to suppose that one would eventually exhaust all

the slender resources of a place like this? And yet, had her eyes

been really open she would perhaps have been amazed to behold spread

about her a wealth of life undreamed of. Something rich and new in

_Frankfort_? Yes, possibly even here. For those individuals in aprons,

weighing out sugar and measuring potatoes so humbly, are not, as a

matter of fact, mere shop fixtures, as they have always seemed. The

clerk at the soda fountain, who will cheerfully dish up ice cream

for the hoodlums when they return hot and famished from their walk

on the pier, has, after all, other interests in life than syrups and

fizz--unimportant, it may be, yet interests, nevertheless. Yon fat

and shabby patriarch, who sits so calmly all day long tilted back

in a red armchair outside the drygoods store, is something more, at

least potentially, than a painted barber's pole. Inside the drygoods

store, although Miss Needham has overlooked her, is the old man's

grand-daughter, busily working, dreaming. She works hard all summer so

she can go to school winters in Grand Rapids. She has a sweetheart in

Grand Rapids, who is taking a business course; they are planning to be

married sometime in the sweet by-and-bye.

But one with the enormous and stirring preoccupations of Louise Needham

could hardly be expected to look on life with open eyes, or, so to

say, analytically. Appreciations must bow and conform. A breezy,

impressionistic sort of synthesis is the background such a mentally and

emotionally active person seems inevitably to evolve. As it was with

the sunrise, so was it also with the people of the world not personally

bound up in her destiny. It really wasn't a deliberate narrowness, but

simply a sensible recognition of time's limitations. Certainly the

living of one's own personal life must always count first.

Reminiscent and dreaming, she passed down the street, while out at

sea the steamer drew closer and closer. In one gaily decorated shop

window was displayed an array of summer fiction: alluring titles, with

often most astonishing jackets--all the season's best sellers, backed

up by certain surviving relics of bygone seasons. There were actually

volumes in this window (though now badly faded and of course occupying

appropriately inferior positions) which had been the avowed, the lauded

best sellers during that summertime, long flown, when Louise and Harold

Gates indulged in so free an interchange of kisses. There had been, as

a matter of fact, rather a profusion of kisses in the best sellers that

year, also: how true they were, after all, to life--that best of all

best sellers!

Miss Needham paused before the window. Her eyes were irresistibly drawn

to examine the miscellany, fruitage of so many seasons, badges of so

much smart selling. In the midst of the conglomeration she spied a

certain volume, modest in title and hue as compared with some of the

others, though still extravagant enough of text, which Leslie had

been telling her about. It was a long historical novel, and Leslie

had expressed himself as well pleased with it. He hadn't, as a matter

of downright fact, read the book all through, but had skimmed along,

omitting all descriptions and the pages where the author philosophized

about life. But he had captured the gist of the story, and had retold

it to Louise one afternoon while they strolled together in delicious

solitude through Lovers' Lane. And she had promised him she would read

the book some time and give him her opinion--it going without saying

that her opinion, at least to him, would be of moment. Louise was no

great reader--certainly not an inveterate reader of long historical

novels. Nevertheless, as her eye now encountered it nestling there in

the window, a sudden caprice swept her right inside the shop. It was a

most amazing thing, but the next moment she found herself telling the

clerk she wished to purchase the volume. And then--he fished it out.

The clerk, it must be communicated--a man, by the way, with all sorts

of interesting and even enthralling human complexes which Louise did

not dream of suspecting, since she knew the town so well--was rather

surprised that his early morning customer should desire this particular

book rather than some of the more gripping things: _Diana's Secret_,

for instance, which was easily one of the most successful works ever

exploited in Frankfort. However, since he had long ago given up all

hope of ever selling the historical romance, and since he expected

to run out of _Diana_ copies before the season was ended, the clerk

naturally offered no comment upon her choice. Covertly blowing a little

dust off the book she had asked for, he wrapped it up, and handed it

over the counter.

Louise was by this time mildly self-reproachful. "How silly of me to

walk right in like that and buy it!" she sighed. "With the money--let's

see. What could I have bought instead ...?"

But however nimbly her mind might exert itself in estimating the

complete badness of her bargain, the book went under her arm. Just a

kind of giddy, final fling, she argued.

As she proceeded on her way, the girl kept assuring herself that

the embrace of the historic romance was decidedly more playful than

serious. It would be amusing later on--oh, perhaps a great deal later

on--to show Leslie she had been as good as her word. Possibly she might

actually _read_ the book--who could tell?--just to please him. Poor

Les! After all, he was only a boy. She was two years his senior. It

would be foolish of them to think of each other, even were her heart

perfectly free.

"Of course it's all right," she said, "for us to be the finest sort of

friends; but it must stop there. If I'd guessed how serious a thing it

was going to turn out for him I'd have seen it wasn't right to let him

think he had any chance...."

This, to tell the truth, tended to put it all rather more

satisfactorily than had hitherto seemed possible. She was quite

pleased, in fact, for it left her in the attitude of repeating "Poor

Les!"

Well, yes, she had thrown him over, she admitted--in a certain sense.

But only in a sense; and anyway it had to be so. However shallow her

reasoning might often appear to others--however often it might fail of

horizon--Miss Needham was herself seldom conscious of the slightest

insincerity at the time. She had inherited, it is true, a certain

intellectual shiftiness from the parent most afflicted with a similar

disorder; but however often she might fluctuate to a new point of view,

so long as she actually held to it the conception possessed for her all

the earmarks of probity and permanence.

"Poor Les! No, no.... I shouldn't have encouraged him so much...." But

she hadn't thought at first that Lynndal was coming. And Arizona is

very, very far away--especially on fine summer nights, when one isn't

wearing any ring....

Yet presently the book under her arm began to appear a somewhat awkward

possession. However easy it might be for her to _tell_ Leslie they must

be merely friends now, and however blithely she might _ask_ him, after

an ancient and at best pretty hackneyed ideal, to look upon her as a

sister, it was going to be very hard--for him. Wasn't it? Could it be

otherwise than hard for him? Wouldn't her having bought the book, even,

especially if he learned she had bought it, make it all still harder?

Louise was naturally so quick in her sympathies that it troubled her

when others couldn't attain as convenient solutions for their problems

as she generally did for her own. And being herself party to another's

unhappiness would, of course, tend to add certain pricks of conscience

to any of the more abstract, though still altruistic, sentiments she

might feel. "Well," she admitted, "I guess I shouldn't have bought the

book, after all--at least not just now." But of course she could keep

it hidden. "I needn't show it to Les right away." For that matter, need

she ever show it to him? "I suppose--I really suppose I might drop it

into the harbour, and be forever rid of it!"

As though, indeed, determined to act upon this dramatic impulse, Louise

turned and walked down amongst some fishermen's huts at the water's

edge. Most of the fishermen were out at sea, having not yet brought in

the morning's haul from the nets. The rude little huts, where the fish

were cleaned and packed in ice for shipping, and where the nets were

washed, stood idly open. The early sunshine lay across their doorsteps.

Some children were at play, running in and out; and before one of the

huts a very old woman sat mending a net, working her hard fingers in a

quick, intelligent way.

Louise walked out upon a little plank dock which was flung, at this

point, into the harbour. The fishermen used the dock when they unloaded

their cargoes of fish. It did not extend a great way; but from its

extremity, as she faced westward, she perceived the approach of a

steamer, still out in the "Big Lake," but nearing the harbour channel.

It was probably Lynndal's boat, though it might possibly be one of the

Ann Arbor car ferries from across Lake Michigan. She must hurry to the

wharf. Still, the notion of throwing the book away persisted. She must

rid herself of every vestige of the past. She must come to Lynndal--and

it was quite thrilling to put it that way--empty-handed! This would

seem to be a formal, a conclusive, even a rather grand way of marking

a close to this surreptitious, this unfortunate, yet this of course

sufficiently innocent little affair with Leslie--poor Les! Yes, it

would be the fitting mark of conclusion; after that her heart would be

swept clean. She grasped the book. At first she thought she would fling

it far out; then that she would just quietly drop it in. But after all,

she slipped the book under her arm again, and made her way hurriedly

back to the village street.

Her mind was busy with explanation and a readjustment not, a moment

ago, foreseen. "It would have been foolish and stagy to have done that.

No, it wouldn't have been _right_! Perhaps--" yes, perhaps Hilda would

want to read it some day. She brightened. "Leslie said there was much

instructive reading in it." Why, yes--the book would do for Hilda, if

not for her. Mightn't Hilda even do for Leslie, now that she had thrown

him over? Ah, it might be so! The idea occurred to Louise at first as

a mere flash of whimsy; however, second thought made the possibility

rather too possible to be altogether agreeable....

"Why, I should think it would be the most natural thing in the world,"

she assured herself. "Of course Hilda's awfully young, but I should

think it would be perfectly splendid if they came to care for each

other in time. I'm sure it would make it ever so much easier for _me_."

She remembered how oddly her sister had behaved earlier in the day,

whenever Leslie was mentioned; how Leslie himself had promised Hilda

he would be back in time to play in the tennis tournament with her. "I

think it would be just splendid!" she thought. "I'll encourage it, of

course, all I can!"

At last, she felt, there was a real solution in sight for poor Les. It

would be the very thing! She was so pleased that she laughed aloud as

she passed the fat and shabby patriarch tilted back in his red armchair

before the drygoods store. But it is possible that even the patriarch,

in a philosophy of age as opposed to that of youth, merely thought,

as he saw her go by: "Another of the resorters." Indeed, it is even

possible that he did not see her at all.

The steamer drew in through the channel. It was the coast steamer

from Ludington, and connected with the Milwaukee line. Louise stood

eagerly beside the freight house, peering up at the passengers on the

deck. Naturally she was very much excited, and experienced a swift,

enveloping sense of joyous romance in being there to welcome the man

she expected some day to marry.

To marry!

Suddenly it occurred to her that, after all, she had hardly thought

of it _once_ that way! Yes, Lynndal was the man who would be her

husband. Marrying him--no, she had somehow barely thought of that

part.... Nevertheless, though the discovery was a little staggering,

she strained her eyes quite gaily for a first glimpse of him; wondered

if he would look to her just the way he looked during those few days

when they had been together in Arizona. But just how, by the way, did

he look then? All at once she thought of Lynndal Barry as an almost

absolute stranger! It was an inexplicable but quite vivid, a rather

terrifying sensation. It made the roots of her hair faintly prickle.

No, for the life of her she couldn't think of any one's being a more

perfect stranger than Lynndal!

Louise wasn't mystically inclined. Yet what she felt seemed almost a

kind of foreboding. Then she laughed to herself, a gay little nervous

laugh. And she told herself it was only natural one should feel this

way, and that it was all a part of her charming, her really absorbing

romance.

8

He was standing by the rail on the upper deck of the steamer, beside

a man with whom he appeared to be in conversation. She had no

difficulty, after all, in recognizing him. Barry was still the tallish,

brown-moustached, quiet-eyed man who had so generously exerted himself

to make her brief stay in Arizona agreeable.

She saw him first, the advantage giving her time to look away again

before his eyes discovered her. Just why she should want to look away

was in the nature of a mystery; yet avert her eyes she certainly

did, as she might have done in the case of a stranger whose presence

had casually attracted her notice. The feeling that, despite what

had passed between them under the discreet propulsion of government

postage, she did not really know this man, returned stronger than ever.

She smiled a little--she had to--at her own manifest perversity; and

flushed vaguely, too.

As soon as Lynndal Barry discovered Miss Needham down on the dock his

face lighted, and he grasped the arm of the man standing beside him.

"There she is!" he cried.

His companion looked, but was a moment or two trying to decide which of

the several very possible young ladies standing about near the freight

house might prove to be _she_. To facilitate the other's search, Barry

pointed. And Louise, observing the gesture out of the corner of an eye,

coloured and turned still more away, maintaining, after all, though she

had been just on the point of abandoning it, the pretense that she had

not yet seen the man to welcome whom she had risen so early and come so

far.

Somehow, a wrong note had been struck. Even the Rev. Needham--and his

views on culture were widely known--had often cautioned his girls

against pointing at persons or things in public. Lynndal ought not to

have pointed. Yes, it was a wrong note--and a wrong note just at the

most critical time. Of course in poising this action of his, Louise, it

is quite patent, now failed to consider one thing; she failed, because

perversely and momentarily she was out of mood, to consider that a

young man who has travelled hundreds of miles to see a young lady he

expects to marry would rather naturally be so carried away at the first

sight of her that manners wouldn't count for the full weight of their

every-day prestige. Great events sanction great exceptions. But Louise,

now, was not prepared to make the requisite allowances. She had thought

that her heart was swept clean; but it wasn't. What demon was it which

had lured her into thinking so long about Richard and Leslie and--and

all the others while she waited for the boat to come in?

Yes, to her it really seemed that a wrong note had been struck. Miss

Needham found herself in an oddly cool and critical mood--certainly not

the mood she had anticipated. The next moment it softened; a feeling

of shy warmth stole upon her. Still, she half wished that she had

decided, after all, not to come to Frankfort, but had been content

to await him quietly at home. That would have given her, if nothing

else, a certain reserve of dignity, which she felt now was somehow

sacrificed. Did not her being here on the wharf to meet him make her

appear too eager? Would it not have been much better to come forward

gracefully out of a romantic nowhere, perhaps even after keeping him

waiting a few minutes? Then, at least, she needn't have undergone the

minor humiliation--wasn't it almost that?--of being pointed at. She

pressed the book under her arm. Suddenly she thought of Richard and his

exquisite manners....

Lynndal was waving his hat now, trying desperately to attract her

attention. The captain of the vessel was making rather a poor landing,

and the sharp little reverse and forward signals in the engine-room

kept sounding repeatedly. A strip of water still lay between the

ship and the wharf, though crew huskies stood ready to heave out

the gang-plank as soon as it became possible to establish shore

connections. Louise interested herself in the rougher activities

aboard ship, and did not yet raise her eyes to the man who now stood

almost directly above her. She felt conscious of a sum of stares in

her direction. All the girls on the wharf had taken full note of the

pointed finger and the waving hat. Each knew--and some, perhaps, not

without regret--that these demonstrations did not apply to _her_. A

quick inventory of wharf possibilities had convinced all present that

it must be Miss Needham who was the impetuously favoured individual.

He had seemed to look quite squarely at her, and she alone had not

bestowed on his pains the gaze of unfortunately lacking acquaintance.

At length one of the younger girls, standing near her, touched Louise's

arm. "Some one's trying to catch your eye," she said. And she nodded up

toward Barry.

He observed the girl's action and called down: "Louise, dear, here I

am--up here!"

And then it was that she relented, at last--thrilled a little--raised

her face coyly to him, and smiled.

No, she would not appear too eager. Let him not think he was winning

her too cheaply. "Did you have a pleasant trip across?" she asked.

Just the faintest shade of disappointment crossed his face. "Oh, yes,"

he replied. "Smooth as glass. How are you, dear?"

She merely nodded. The historical novel slipped out from under her arm

and fell to the ground. She stooped hurriedly and picked it up.

"My, it's good to see you!" he communicated through a hubbub which

really made it difficult to be heard.

But she was again prevented, or spared, a reply, by having to step

quickly aside as the gang-plank was run out. The ship was at last

securely moored. Barry's grey-haired companion called his attention to

this fact, and then the two men seized their bags and hurried down.

Louise stepped aside to wait; realized an augmenting sense of

strangeness and quandary--her heart in a kind of flutter. She felt now

hot, now cold. An odd, frantic resolve raced through her brain: "He

mustn't kiss me!" And yet--for there was a conflicting after-flash--to

have him make no attempt would constitute the very essence itself of

pique! In the midst of this rather extraordinary mood, Louise recoiled,

as it were, and shook herself. She called her mental turmoil silly

and maudlin; she even called it wicked. Then Lynndal came, and the

terrible moment passed, leaving her banners waving. Emphatically it had

been in his mind to kiss her; any one could plainly see that; the act

itself, however (for he must _not_ feel too sure), she forestalled by a

very delicate but at the same time unmistakable gesture of repulsion,

unto which he bowed with a graceful disappointment that, for the time

being, very materially lightened the prospect. She had won in the first

skirmish; and the knowledge of victory, the delicious sense of power in

her it seemed to emphasize, put her in an easier, more cheerful frame

of mind.

Instead of kissing Lynndal, she held out her hand to him with shy

cordiality. She fancied, in a whimsical flash, that she was meeting him

all over again, for the first time. A subtle sense of romance in this

new aspect of their relationship quickened her heart....

Barry's shipboard companion was still at his side. Or rather not quite

at his side, either, but holding discreetly back--even courteously

discovering a sudden optical interest in another quarter of the

compass. From this thoughtful detachment he was recalled and introduced

as Mr. Barrett O'Donnell.

Miss Needham was delighted to make his acquaintance--Miss Needham would

have welcomed, just then, an acquaintance with the man in the moon,

no matter how outlandish he might prove. For the moment, if in a way

delightful, was also complex and curiously taut. O'Donnell jollied

things up. His was a ready tongue, with, now and then, just a whisper

of Irish; his smile was droll and cheering, though perhaps rather too

facile--too facile, that is (for it was perfectly sincere), to be ever

quite enveloping. Louise walked between them, and the three made their

way to the railroad station, where the locomotive of a "resort special"

was puffing quite prodigiously, and pretending, after the manner of

locomotives, to be ever on the verge of pulling right out, mindless of

schedule.

Miss Needham skipped with hectic and perverse coquetry. She stimulated

herself anew upon the assurance that it was great fun having a lover

to meet. And it was really fine, for another thing, to be able so

perfectly to dominate the scene, disposing all according to her

whim--best of all, to have another man right there on the spot to

behold these palpable wonders! She remembered, with a tiny obscure

pang, how she had wished Richard might be present to see what amazing

progress she had made. Richard she could not have; but fortune provided

a substitute in the unsuspecting person of jolly Mr. O'Donnell.

Louise's mood of almost saucy pleasure was sufficiently generous

to overflow in Barry's favour, else the poor man would surely have

shivered himself to death ere this. She smiled up at him with more

artlessness than really consorted with her triumph.

"Hilda was afraid you might not come," she chatted pleasantly, flirting

a little with the corners of her mouth.

"She was?"

"Yes, she was dreadfully worried--you know how children are. She'll be

awfully relieved when she sees you."

"But you," he asked, half jestingly and half in faint earnest, "--you

weren't afraid?"

"I? Oh, no!" She laughed along with the denial. "Not _I_."

The locomotive was coughing and wheezing and snorting, with an air of

absurd importance. All at once there was a tremendous exhaust which

sent steam geysering in considerable volume to either side. They were

so close that the roar brought a tightening to the girl's throat. Barry

touched her arm, gently insinuating her out of the path of the steam's

dominion. She felt the momentary pressure of his fingers. And through

the hiss and dizzy vibration in the air it was as though he were saying

to her: "You are mine, all mine! You are mine forever and ever! You can

belong henceforth to no one but me!" She trembled and felt faint. Her

heart was beset with goblins and ghosts....

When they had settled for the diminutive journey, Louise was more than

ever glad of Mr. O'Donnell's presence. But now it was no longer so

much that he might behold the brilliance of her autocracy as that she

might lean upon him while striving to adjust herself to the almost

alarming situation Barry's arrival had precipitated. And O'Donnell,

for his own part, was not a little flattered at being so deluged with

attention from a pretty woman--especially since she had a real, live

lover sitting right beside her! The lover himself took everything in

a perfectly philosophical manner. Naturally she didn't want to reveal

her heart to the wide world, his comfortable acquiescence seemed to

say. She was reserving all that for him alone. And in the meantime it

was very decent and intelligent of her to be nice to his friend. As a

matter of fact, Miss Needham's conduct wasn't by any means so sheer and

vivid as the complex which produced it; she was not behaving nearly so

strangely as she felt.

The journey back to Beulah, disproportionately lengthy if measured on

the dial of one's watch, was under way. All the coaches were packed

with resorters plying off in search of adventure--adventure which,

in its most substantial form, could they but know it, they were to

discover inside those mysterious covered baskets stowed away under

seats and, sometimes rather precariously, on the metal racks overhead.

For eating is, after all, the Great Adventure in Middle Western resort

life. One might perhaps hesitate about putting it ahead of canoes in

the moonlight, and that indispensable adjunct of every resort that ever

was, the Lovers' Lane. But whereas the latter phenomena appeal to only

a single age or mood of society, the adventure of filling the stomach

appeals to everyone alike, old and young, mighty and humble. So far

as the present excursionists were concerned, the furtive covers were

soon flapping; and the air grew tropical with the persuasive aroma of

bananas.

Louise sat beside her lover in the midst of these not unfamiliar

scenes; and the outcome of her half agreeable, half harrowing mental

complex was a slightly hysterical gaiety. So long as Mr. O'Donnell

was with them, she felt secure. But why _was_ this? Why was it she

suddenly dreaded the thought of finding herself for the first time

alone with Lynndal? Phantoms swarmed. In her letters she had given

him every promise. Yet now he was with her again, she dared not let

herself go. Phantoms of old delight; phantoms, too, projected into the

scope of an imagined future.... The words she had seemed to hear while

the steam brought that queer stuffiness to her throat, still echoed

troublingly: "You are mine, all mine! You can belong henceforth to

no one--but to me!" Her mind was all charged with a brooding unrest.

Externally she sparkled and was blithe; but within lurked a vague fever

of apprehension....

Things like this may conceivably be going on in almost any one's mind

at almost any time; but they are never shown. We are adepts when it

comes to guarding our guilty struggles.

The train was winding its way through dismal swamp country. Stark

trunks of trees, stripped of verdure, with the life in them long

extinct, stood knee-deep in brackish water. Though the day was quite

bright, an impenetrable veil of melancholy lay over the swamplands--a

gloom never lifted, which seemed the child of silence and stagnation.

The sad blight of the landscape seeped into her heart. She was twisting

her life this way and that, absorbed, as usual, in the mystery of her

own fascinating if at present rather menaced ego.

Lynndal Barry and his companion, chatting, seemed unaware of the girl's

momentary absorption; her curious, almost breathless, detachment.

Although detached, she was nevertheless looking at Barry with serious,

half-seeing eyes. And all at once she found herself thinking of him

respectfully, even tenderly. There was something conspicuously ordered

and kindly and calm about him. She seemed, abruptly, conscious of a

great patience in this man who had come to her out of the West; had

scarcely discovered in his letters how essentially mature he was. But

the next moment this vaguely annoyed her. She seemed to miss in him

the thrill of fire and passion which her nature craved. He seemed to

be relaxed upon the snug hearth-rug of life--yes, in slippers! Barry

was, actually, not much above thirty; but his seemed to her now a poise

unwelcome. She fingered the book in her lap with nervous, groping

fingers; even shuddered a little as she gazed off across the swamp.

Barry, however, seemed aware of none of the girl's emotional fluxes.

Why should he be? How _could_ he be? Barry didn't even in the least

suspect that she had any such things as emotional fluxes in her

make-up; nor, for that matter, was it likely he would quite know an

emotional flux if he should meet it. This must not, however, be taken

to signify that Barry wasn't sensitive, for he was. And he had a way,

too, of biding his time, which sometimes deceived people into thinking

him invulnerable to the finer antennæ of feelings. However, though his

ear was not entirely deaf to the unstrummed music of life, he did not

as yet suspect--or if so, not more than just glancingly--that there was

to be a flaw in his eager little romance.

"Oh, yes, it will surprise her completely, of course," O'Donnell was

saying.

"You haven't written at all, then?"

"You see, I've only just learned she was back from Tahulamaji. I

learned about it in town. I may say I learned of it only yesterday!"

"It's queer, isn't it," remarked Barry, with almost a flash of

imagination, "we should have happened to come up on the same steamer?"

And then, being just a delightful, sane, normal individual, O'Donnell

said what _had_ to be said--what is _always_ said when talk reaches

such a point: He said that the world was small.

Louise came back to them with an effort. The train was beginning to

draw up out of the swamp region, and on to a plain better adapted to

rural uses. The sunshine lay very bright upon the grass. An emotion of

hope stirred in her heart. Everything was bound to turn out for the

best--_her_ best, she thought. Of course it would! She felt all at once

radiantly, boundlessly happy. And she forgot the words in the steam,

when his fingers had touched her arm.

The subject of this miraculous meeting of Barry and O'Donnell still

animated a conversation which she entered with almost desperate

eagerness.

"You weren't acquainted before you met on the boat?"

"Never laid eyes on each other," laughed the Irishman. "We began

talking about dry-farming in the gentlemen's lounge, and from that,

gradually...."

"The fact is," put in Barry, who wanted to see what little mystery

there was cleared up as quickly as possible, "we found we were both on

our way to--"

"--to besiege ladies living under the same roof!" concluded the other's

readier tongue.

Barry coloured a bit at the bluntness, but rather with pleasure than

embarrassment.

"I guess I don't quite understand," remarked Louise a little coolly.

"Well, you see, the fact is we're very old friends, Miss Whitcom and

I--"

"Aunt Marjie!"

"Yes--Marjie...." He repeated the name slowly, and with the sly relish

of one who is not quite sure whether he would dare perpetrate such an

indulgence in the presence of the adored herself.

"Why, how perfectly _romantic_!" cried Louise. And she ceased entirely,

for the moment, to be concerned about the puzzling and rather tangled

romance of her own life.

"You say you haven't seen each other for years?"

"Five years," he nodded.

"Oh, how surprised she _will_ be! I do certainly want to be there when

she first sees you!"

For of course it went without saying that they were lovers. Only fancy!

Well--as much had been said outright. He was coming to besiege Aunt

Marjie, just as Lynndal....

Her heart clouded a little with the mist of perplexity which seemed,

now, to have begun settling the moment she heard Leslie's step outside

on the hillside at dawn....

But O'Donnell went on nonchalantly enough: "Oh, but there'll be

nothing remarkable at all. Miss Whitcom, if you'll pardon my

speaking quite freely of your relative, has the most extraordinary

control. Perhaps you've noticed it. I can tell you just what she'll

do. She'll talk about the new wall paper in the throne room of

the Queen of Tahulamaji's palace. Or else it will be still some

perfectly commonplace remark about a tiresome old swimming medal. But

exclamations in the true sense? No, there won't be any, Miss Needham, I

assure you."

Oh, Eros! Here, sitting all perplexed beside the man she has promised

to marry--all besieged by ghosts of her past loves, and the ghost of

one scarce passed as yet--is a woman. And yonder in a cottage, covering

the unlucky shortage of pancakes with mundane chuckles, is another

woman who has been pursued for twenty years by one dauntless lover, and

who, when he comes, will talk about the paper on the wall.

The journey drew to a screeching and bumping close; the brakes

whistled, and the locomotive fell a-panting most lustily, as though to

proclaim that it had done a mighty thing indeed in hauling a few laden

coaches a dozen miles across the swamp-lands.

The intrepid _Pathfinder_ lay at the dock, waiting. All Beulah had

turned out, it really seemed, to welcome the train; and now all Beulah

swarmed down to bid those who would embark farewell.

There was the mayor--or so one fancied; and there were aldermen--could

not one fairly see them sitting in solemn council? There was the

Methodist minister in his half-clerical week-day togs; there were all

the old men of the town, and all the old ladies; all the boys and girls

and babies; together with just as many others as could possibly be

spared from conducting the business of the town. The dock was quite

crowded. Yet Louise and her two companions were the only passengers the

_Pathfinder_ was to bear away.

There always seemed something vaguely symbolic about these important

departures of the _Pathfinder_. The townsfolk seemed to gaze off with a

kind of wistful regret--yes, from the mayor down to the tiniest babe.

It always was so: as though the _Pathfinder_ were bound for free,

large spaces of ocean; for ports in Europe, or the Indies. And the

townspeople could only assemble on the shore and silently watch this

ship's glorious westward flight. So life went.

Many are called, but few are chosen!