e think I had seen it
before," she answered. "It must be that. But how strange it is!" she
exclaimed, "that sensation of having been there before--in some place
before where you can't possibly have been."

"And do you feel it here?" he asked, as vividly interested as if
they two had been the first to notice the phenomenon which has been a
psychical consolation to so many young observers.

"Yes," she cried.

"I hope I was with you," he said, with a sudden turn of levity, which
did not displease her, for there seemed to be a tender earnestness
lurking in it. "I couldn't bear to think of your being alone in such a
howling wilderness."

"Oh, I was with a large picnic," she retorted gaily. "You might have
been among the rest. I didn't notice."

"Well, the next time, I wish you'd look closer. I don't like being left
out." They were so far behind the rest that he devoted himself entirely
to her, and they had grown more and more confidential.

They came to a narrow foot-bridge over a deep gorge. The hand-rail had
fallen away. He sprang forward and gave her his hand for the passage.
"Who helped you over here?" he demanded. "Don't say I didn't."

"Perhaps it was you," she murmured, letting him keep the fingers to
which he clung a moment after they had crossed the bridge. Then she took
them away, and said: "But I can't be sure. There were so many others."

"Other fellows?" he demanded, placing himself before her on the narrow
path, so that she could not get by. "Try to remember, Miss Pasmer. This
is very important. It would break my heart if it was really some one
else." She stole a glance at his face, but it was smiling, though his
voice was so earnest. "I want to help you over all the bad places, and I
don't want any one else to have a hand in it."

The voice and the face still belied each other, and between them the
girl chose to feel herself trifled with by the artistic temperament. "If
you'll please step out of the way, Mr. Mavering," she said severely, "I
shall not need anybody's help just here."

He instantly moved aside, and they were both silent, till she said, as
she quickened her pace to overtake the others in front, "I don't see how
you can help liking nature in such a place as this."

"I can't--human nature," he said. It was mere folly; and an abstract
folly at that; but the face that she held down and away from him flushed
with sweet consciousness as she laughed.

On the cliff beetling above the bay, wh