you promise to marry me?" he said.

She smiled.

"Well, what made you?"

"I?" cried Shelton.

She slipped her hand over his hand.

"Oh, Dick!" she said.

"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you. Do you think I shall?"

"Of course!"

Of course! The words seemed very much or very little.

She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving
silver line. "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we
might do."

Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might understand
each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the old
time-honoured way?

They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence, while
the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens. And all the beauty of the
evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and lighted
campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the witchery and
shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling, and the splash
of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted. The flighting bats, the
forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier perfume-she summed them all up
in herself. The fingermarks had deepened underneath her eyes, a languor
came upon her; it made her the more sweet and youthful. Her shoulders
seemed to bear on them the very image of our land--grave and aspiring,
eager yet contained--before there came upon that land the grin of greed,
the folds of wealth, the simper of content. Fair, unconscious, free!

And he was silent, with a beating heart.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE BIRD 'OF PASSAGE

That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his eyes
fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he began to
read it through a second time. In the dark, oak-panelled bedroom, his
four-post bed, with back of crimson damask and its dainty sheets, was
lighted by the candle glow; the copper pitcher of hot water in the basin,
the silver of his brushes, and the line of his well-polished boots all
shone, and Shelton's face alone was gloomy, staring at the yellowish
paper in his hand.

"The poor chap wants money, of course," he thought. But why go on for
ever helping one who had no claim on him, a hopeless case, incurable--one
whom it was his duty to let sink for the good of the community at large?
Ferrand's vagabond refinement had beguiled him into charity that should
have been bestowed on hospitals, or any charitable work but foreign
missions. To give