m, too. He,
likewise, seemed to belong to the little house as he took one of the
wicker chairs.

"Not," said Honora, "when I can have this."

She was dressed in white, her background of lilac leaves. Seated on the
railing, with the tip of one toe resting on the porch, she smiled down
at him from under the shadows of her wide hat.

"I didn't think you would," he declared. "This place seems to suit you,
as I imagined you. I have thought of you often since we first met last
winter."

"Yes," she replied hastily, "I am very happy here. Mrs. Shorter tells me
you are staying with then."

"When I saw you again last night," he continued, ignoring her attempt
to divert the stream from his channel, "I had a vivid impression as of
having just left you. Have you ever felt that way about people?"

"Yes," she admitted, and poked the toe of her boot with her parasol.

"And then I find you in this house, which has so many associations
for me. Harmoniously here," he added, "if you know what I mean. Not a
newcomer, but some one who must always have been logically expected."

She glanced at him quickly, with parted lips. It was she who had done
most of the talking at Mrs. Grainger's dinner; and the imaginative
quality of mind he was now revealing was unlooked for. She was surprised
not to find it out of character. It is a little difficult to know
what she expected of him, since she did not know herself the methods,
perhaps; of the Viking in Longfellow's poem. She was aware, at least,
that she had attracted him, and she was beginning to realize it was not
a thing that could be done lightly. This gave her a little flutter of
fear.

"Are you going to be long in Newport?" she asked.

"I am leaving on Friday," he replied. "It seems strange to be here again
after so many years. I find I've got out of touch with it. And I haven't
a boat, although Farnham's been kind enough to offer me his."

"I can't imagine you, somehow, without a boat," she said, and added
hastily: "Mrs. Shorter was speaking of you this morning, and said that
you were always on the water when you were here. Newport must have been
quite different then."

He accepted the topic, and during the remainder of his visit she
succeeded in keeping the conversation in the middle ground, although she
had a sense of the ultimate futility of the effort; a sense of pressure
being exerted, no matter what she said. She presently discovered,
however, that the taste for literature