frown. Men can be quite indifferent to
suffering in each other if the suffering is not extreme, and women can
be, too, but men are quite miserable in the presence of a woman who is
in pain, and women, before a suffering man, while they are not
miserable, are always full of a desire to do something that will help.
And that might be a small, additional proof--if any more proof were
necessary--that they are much the more practical of the two sexes.

The girl's sharp glance seemed to assure her that Ste. Marie was
comfortable, now that he was sitting down, for the frown went from her
brows, and she began to arrange the mysterious white garment in her lap
in preparation to go on with her work.

Ste. Marie watched her for a while in a contented silence. The leaves
overhead stirred under a puff of air, and a single yellow beam of
sunlight came down and shivered upon the girl's dark head and played
about the bundle of white over which her hands were busy. She moved
aside to avoid it, but it followed her, and when she moved back it
followed again and danced in her lap as if it were a live thing with a
malicious sense of humor. It might have been Tinker Bell out of _Peter
Pan_, only it did not jingle. Mlle. O'Hara uttered an exclamation of
annoyance, and Ste. Marie laughed at her, but in a moment the leaves
overhead were still again, and the sunbeam, with a sense of humor, was
gone to torment some one else.

Still neither of the two spoke, and Ste. Marie continued to watch the
girl bent above her sewing. He Was thinking of what she had said to him
when he asked her if she read Spanish--that her mother had been Spanish.
That would account, then, for her dark eyes. It would account for the
darkness of her skin, too, but not for its extraordinary clearness and
delicacy, for Spanish women are apt to have dull skins of an opaque
texture. This was, he said to himself, an Irish skin with a darker
stain, and he was quite sure that he had never before seen anything at
all like it.

Apart from coloring, she was all Irish, of the type which has become
famous the world over, and which in the opinion of men who have seen
women in all countries, and have studied them, is the most beautiful
type that exists in our time.

Ste. Marie was dark himself, and in the ordinary nature of things he
should have preferred a fair type in women. In theory, for that matter,
he did prefer it, but it was impossible for him to sit near Coira O'Hara
and wat