nny. Mr. Brand, of
course, has property of his own, eh?"

"I believe he has some property; but that has nothing to do with it."

"With you, of course not; but with your father and sister it must have.
So, as I say, if this were settled, I should feel more at liberty."

"More at liberty?" Gertrude repeated. "Please unfasten the boat."

Felix untwisted the rope and stood holding it. "I should be able to say
things to you that I can't give myself the pleasure of saying now," he
went on. "I could tell you how much I admire you, without seeming to
pretend to that which I have no right to pretend to. I should make
violent love to you," he added, laughing, "if I thought you were so
placed as not to be offended by it."

"You mean if I were engaged to another man? That is strange reasoning!"
Gertrude exclaimed.

"In that case you would not take me seriously."

"I take every one seriously," said Gertrude. And without his help she
stepped lightly into the boat.

Felix took up the oars and sent it forward. "Ah, this is what you have
been thinking about? It seemed to me you had something on your mind.
I wish very much," he added, "that you would tell me some of these
so-called reasons--these obligations."

"They are not real reasons--good reasons," said Gertrude, looking at the
pink and yellow gleams in the water.

"I can understand that! Because a handsome girl has had a spark of
coquetry, that is no reason."

"If you mean me, it 's not that. I have not done that."

"It is something that troubles you, at any rate," said Felix.

"Not so much as it used to," Gertrude rejoined.

He looked at her, smiling always. "That is not saying much, eh?" But she
only rested her eyes, very gravely, on the lighted water. She seemed to
him to be trying to hide the signs of the trouble of which she had just
told him. Felix felt, at all times, much the same impulse to dissipate
visible melancholy that a good housewife feels to brush away dust. There
was something he wished to brush away now; suddenly he stopped rowing
and poised his oars. "Why should Mr. Brand have addressed himself to
you, and not to your sister?" he asked. "I am sure she would listen to
him."

Gertrude, in her family, was thought capable of a good deal of levity;
but her levity had never gone so far as this. It moved her greatly,
however, to hear Felix say that he was sure of something; so that,
raising her eyes toward him, she tried intently, for some moments, to