you fully
understand me, I shall ask you to tell me that which she believed I
ought to know. My dear madam, when I come to you and demand your
confidence, I have no fear that you will withhold it."

She closed her eyes as if to shut out some painful vision, and drooped
her head lower, till it rested on her chest.

The sun flashed up from his ocean bed, and, as the first beams fell on
the woman's hair, Dr. Grey softly passed his broad white hand over its
perfumed masses, redolent of orange flowers.

"The air is too damp for you. Come with me to the house."

She did not heed his words, and perhaps his touch on her head
recalled some exquisitely painful memory, for she shook it off, and
exclaimed,--

"Doubtless, like the remainder of the curious herd, you are wondering
at my 'crown of glory,'--and conjecturing what dire tragedy bequeathed
it to me. Sir,--

'My hair was black, but white my life:
The colors in exchange are cast!
The white upon my hair is rife,
The black upon my life has passed.'

Dr. Grey, I understand you; but you need not stay here to keep guard
over me, as if I were an imbecile or a refugee from an insane asylum.
That I am not the one or the other, is attributable to the fact that
my powers of endurance are almost fabulous. You fear that in my
loneliness and complete isolation I may turn coward, at the last
ordeal I am put through,--and, like Zeno cry out, and in a fit of
desperation strangle myself? Dr. Grey, make yourself easy. I do not
love my Creator so devotedly that I must needs hurry into his presence
before He sees proper to send me a summons.'"

"I am afraid to leave you here, for any woman who does not love and
reverence her Maker, requires a guardian. Of course you will do as you
like, but I shall remain here as long as you do."

He rose, and crossing his arms on his chest, began to walk about the
pavilion. She caught up her hair, twisted it hastily into a knot, and
secured it with her comb. As she did so, a small cluster of double
violets dropped into her lap. She had gathered them the preceding
afternoon, had carried them as an offering to Elsie, who insisted that
she should wear them in her hair, "they looked so bonnie just behind
the little roguish ear." At her request Mrs. Gerome had placed them at
the side of her head, and the old woman made her lean down that she
might smell them, and leave a kiss on their blue petals. Now the sight
of the withered flowers melte