one on the little
copse-enclosed triangle of grass. He smiled pleasantly. She had not time
to be surprised.

"What did you think of me this morning, running away without paying my
fare?" he asked.

It seemed very natural now that he should come. She was glad that he had
not brought his horse.

"I thought you would come by again," said Grace Allen, standing up,
with one oar over the side ready to pull in or push off.

Gregory extended his hand as though to ask for hers to steady him as he
came into the boat. Grace was surprised. No one ever did that at the
Rhonefoot, but she thought it might be that he was a stranger and did
not understand about boats. She held out her hand. Gregory leapt in
beside her in a moment, but did not at once release the hand. She tried
to pull it away.

"It is too little a hand to do so much hard work," he said.

Instantly Grace became conscious that it was rough and hard with rowing.
She had not thought of this before. He stooped and kissed it.

"Now," he said, "let me row across for you, and sit in front of me where
I can see you. You made me forget all about everything else this
morning, and now I must make up for it."

It was a long way across, and evidently Gregory Jeffray was not a good
oarsman, for it was dark when Grace Allen went indoors to her aunts. Her
heart was bounding within her. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed
quickly and silently through her parted red lips. There was a new thing
in her eye.

Every evening thereafter, through all that glorious height of midsummer,
there came a crying at the Waterfoot; and every evening Grace Allen went
over to the edge of the Rhone wood to answer it. There the boat lay
moored to a stone upon the turf, while Gregory and she walked upon the
flowery forest carpet, and the dry leaves watched and clashed and
muttered above them as the gloaming fell. These were days of rapture,
each a doorway into yet fuller and more perfect joy.

Over at the Waterfoot the copses grew close. The green turf was velvet
underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them
listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to
Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet him over the Black Water.

She rowed back alone, the simple soul that was in her forwandered and
mazed with excess of joy. As she set the boat to the shore and came up
the bank bearing the oars which were her wings into the world of love
under the green al