ree from either
abiding joys or carking sorrows.

"I am more grieved than I can tell that this should have happened,"
she said, striving hard to restrain the sob in her voice, though it
gave her words the ring of genuine regret. "I little dreamed that
you thought of me in that way, Mr. Bower. But I can never marry
you--never, no matter what the circumstances! Surely you will help me
to dispel the memory of a foolish moment. It has been trying to both
of us. Let us pretend that it never was."

Had she struck him with a whip he could not have flinched so visibly
beneath the lash as from the patent honesty of her words. For a time
he did not answer, and the sudden calm that came quick on the heels of
frenzy had in it a weird peacefulness.

Neither could ever again forget the noisy rush of the stream, the glad
singing of birds in a thicket overhanging the bank, the tinkle of the
cow bells as the cattle began to climb to the pastures for a luxurious
hour ere sundown. It was typical of their lives that they should be
divided by the infant Inn, almost at its source, and that thenceforth
the barrier should become ever wider and deeper till it reached the
infinite sea.

He seemed to take his defeat well. He was pale, and his lips twitched
with the effort to attain composure. He looked at Helen with a hungry
longing that was slowly acknowledging restraint.

"I must have frightened you," he said, breaking a silence that was
growing irksome. "Of course I apologize for that. But we cannot leave
things where they are. If you must send me away from you, I may at
least demand a clear understanding. Have no fear that I shall distress
you further. May I join you, or will you walk to the bridge a little
higher up?"

"Let us return to the hotel," she protested.

"No, no. We are not children. We have broken no law of God or man. Why
should I be ashamed of having asked you to marry me, or you to listen,
even though it be such a hopeless fantasy as you say?"

Helen, deeply moved in his behalf, walked to a bridge of planks a
little distance up stream. Bower joined her there. He had deliberately
resolved to do a dastardly thing. If Spencer was the cause of Helen's
refusal, that obstacle, at any rate, could be smashed to a pulp.

"Now, Helen," he said, "I want you to believe that your happiness is
my only concern. Perhaps, at some other time, you may allow me to
renew in less abrupt manner the proposal I have made to-day. But when
yo