is a true daughter of Nature, but--she is also the daughter of Mrs.
Bal.

Can Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald have been such a one when she was
eighteen? No, in spite of the haunting, almost impish likeness, I'm sure
she cannot. But I think Somerled wonders, and that now and then the
relationship and the resemblance creep between him and his instinctive
perception of truth in the girl.

She came to us with Somerled on the night of our first sight of her,
leading him as Una might have led her lion.

It was a blow to Aline, a blow over the heart, and I felt it for her on
mine. She managed her affairs badly next day, but I didn't blame her. I
couldn't. Somerled and I had already lost our heads.

I scarcely believe Somerled was in love with the girl then; perhaps he
isn't even now. He merely felt the call of youth, and a strange beauty
and a stranger vitality. His life needed this call. It waked up the
sleeping youth in his own heart. It set his old enthusiasms singing like
birds uncaged. It made him want to be again all the things he had
decided not to be. It brought back beliefs in realities that he had
feared were illusions. In other words, it freed the temperamental artist
and dreamer from the spoilt and successful millionaire. But he could
have let the bright vision go, perhaps, and have been pleasantly
contented later to remember it, if--it hadn't been for Aline. Because
she wanted to part them and make him forget the girl's existence, she
took the very way to throw them together. Then, when she had done her
worst, she turned to _me_ for help.

I was horribly sorry for her, and the keen hurt of my sympathy made me
fear for myself. The girl had got hold of me too, of course. When I
found that she was going away from us with Somerled, I felt physically
sick with the sense of loss. It was as if, with Barrie gone, everything
was gone. I knew that poor Aline must be suffering exactly the same dumb
tortures in regard to Somerled, whom she had thought so nearly hers. And
that is why, when she begged me to help--somehow, anyhow--I wasn't sure
whether I promised to please her or myself.

I was able to do very little toward keeping the promise, either way,
until Edinburgh. It was there, really, that Aline and I first seriously
took up the role of villains--if we are villains. But two persons less
well cut out by Nature for such parts can hardly exist. We want to be
good and happy, and we want each other to be happy, and all th