her face had clouded as I spoke until now I dared speak no more, blaming myself that the perplexities that possessed me had again blundered across her pain. Her eyes were upon the[Pg 61] ground where her fingers burrowed absently in the sand. When she raised them to mine there were tears in them; but they were tears unshed, and eyes that looked at me kindly.

[Pg 61]

"Please don't," she said. "I do understand. I would like to let you help, but—there is nothing you can help about, nothing that I can ask or tell."

"Forgive me," I said, and looked away from her.

I think that from that morning we were better friends. Neither of us again made any allusion to the night of alarm; but it was as if both now felt a share in it, a kind of blindfold sympathy not altogether comfortless. Once when we were making a long tour of woods and beaches, she said suddenly: "You don't talk much about yourself, Mr. Crosby."

"Don't I?" I answered. "Well, I don't suppose that what I am or have done in the world would be particularly interesting. You were right the other day, after all: nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't be so hungry for adventures."

"Oh, but you must have had some adventure; everybody has."

I launched into a tale of a green parrot confiscated from an itinerant vendor and sold at auction in a candy store. I stopped suddenly. Was this her way[Pg 62] of verifying her father's opinion of me? She read my half-formed suspicion like a flash.

[Pg 62]

"Listen," she said with quick seriousness. "If I had, or could have, the faintest belief in anything really bad about you, don't you see that I shouldn't be here? I want you to remember that."

"I ought to have known," I replied. "I'm very sorry."

With that she swung back into gaiety, demanding the conclusion of the tale; but I was for the moment too deeply touched to follow. We were on our way home; and before us where the path took a little turn about a tree larger than its neighbors, a man stepped into our sight. He was walking fast, covering the ground in long nervous strides. He carried a bit of stick with which he switched smartly at the bushes along the path. For a moment we were both silent, then Lady caught her breath in a long sigh. It was the man we had met at the gate. He saw us then, and took off his hat.

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