it, and got in and rowed up a little way to where there was a better
descent.

"Now, then, shall we all go at once," said he, "or take turns?"

"It is such a diminutive vessel," said Bruce, eying it doubtingly, "that
perhaps Miss Custer and myself had better 'pause upon the brink' here,
and wait until you two have made a short voyage."

"Oh, we shall not make a very short voyage," said Ruth, running down the
bank and grasping the doctor's hand as he held it out to steady her in
stepping into the boat. "I want to go up as far as the bridge and make a
sketch to-night: the sunset and the moon-rise are lovely."

"Better come on--don't think we'll upset," said the doctor, beginning,
nevertheless, to push off.

Bruce looked about and found a log to sit on. "Just spread your shawl on
it," said he; and Miss Custer was obliged to unfold her beautiful white
burnous.

"What an idea!" she thought, "and how ungallant he is!"

And yet he had a remarkable power of fascination, though, as Ruth said,
he made no effort to please.

He took a seat beside her, and for some time his eyes followed the boat.
After a while he said, "And did you manage to get through with _The
Spanish Gypsy_ again?"

"Oh no," said Miss Custer. "Didn't you know? The doctor was called into
the country."

"Ah! he was?"

"Yes."

"Then you lost your afternoon's entertainment? That must have been a
great deprivation."

He turned his head and looked at her with a lingering, exploring gaze
that was difficult for her to fathom. How should she answer? He was
certainly the only being of his sex who baffled or embarrassed her.

"It was indeed," she returned demurely, and yet with a hope that he
might discover that she was but half in earnest. Her eyelids drooped and
her lips were curved with a smile. She was pleasurably conscious of his
prolonged gaze, and hoped something from it, knowing from much previous
experience the power of her beauty.

The silence was very eloquent. He broke it--or intensified it indeed--by
repeating from _The Gypsy_, in a low and remarkably well-modulated
voice,

"Do you know
Sometimes when we sit silent, and the air
Breathes gently on us from the orange trees,
It seems that with the whisper of a word
Our souls must shrink, yet poorer, more apart.
Is it not so?

Do you know the answer?" he asked, never once taking away his eyes.

She raised hers and gave it with equal effe