ow fondly they listened as I talked about the old place, of well-known
trees, of the big rock on the brink of the ravine. I even told them that
the General lamented the breaking of the engagement, that he had come as
an agent, that his son was at fault. Guinea smiled at this, and I
thought that her eyes grew darker.

I learned that my train was not to leave until night. I was glad of
this, for it gave me a sweet lingering time; and in the afternoon Guinea
and I went down to the river.

"We will get a boat and row up past the island, away up to the beautiful
hills," she said. "But can you row?" she asked, with a look of concern.

"I have pulled a boat against a swifter current than this." I answered.
"I lived near the bank of a rapid stream."

We got into a graceful boat and skimmed easily over the water. Now it
was my time to wonder and to muse over the changes that had come--to
dream as I looked at her, as she sat, trailing her hand in the water,
her hand, my hand, though she had not let me take it to help her into
the boat. With her a swamp would have been attractive, but here we were
in a paradise. Boats up and down the river; lovers went by, singing. On
one shore the scene was quiet, with easy slopes and with houses here and
there; but the other shore was wild with bluffs, with tangled vines and
monstrous trees that storms had gnarled and twisted. Here a spring
gushed out with a gleeful laugh, and lovers paused to listen, and in its
flow the city oarsman cooled his blistered hands.

"Guinea, do you see that high bluff up there among the pine trees?"

"Yes, and isn't it a charming place?"

"I'm glad you think so?"

"Why are you glad of that?"

"Because you--I mean a woman who has had her way--because she may live
there. When at last she is tired of that way, and when she has gone to a
man with her hands held out, he will take her to a house built on that
bluff, a summer home. I'm not joking. Next year there will be a
beautiful home up there. Don't you see, the land is for sale? And in the
house a man is going to write a history of a woman who had her way and
of a man who--well, I hardly know what to say about him, but I am not
going to hide his faults nor cover up his weaknesses."

"Are you really in earnest, Mr. Hawes?"

"Yes, I mean every word of it. Wouldn't you--I mean, wouldn't the woman
who had persisted in having her way--wouldn't she like a home up there?"

In her voice was the musical cluck that