."

She stopped, alarmed at the change of expression in his face. A quick
flush had crossed his cheek; for an instant he had looked suspiciously
into her questioning eyes. But the next moment the idea of his quietly
selecting this simple, unsophisticated girl as the confidant of his
miserable marriage, and the desperation that had brought him there,
struck him as being irresistibly ludicrous and he smiled. It was the
first time that the habitual morbid intensity of his thoughts on that
one subject had ever been disturbed by reaction; it was the first
time that a clear ray of reason had pierced the gloom in which he had
enwrapped it. Seeing him smile, the young girl smiled too. Then they
smiled together vaguely and sympathetically, as over some unspoken
confidence. But, unknown and unsuspected by himself, that smile had
completed his emancipation and triumph. The next moment, when he sought
with a conscientious sigh to reenter his old mood, he was half shocked
to find it gone. Whatever gradual influence--the outcome of these few
months of rest and repose--may have already been at work to dissipate
his clouded fancy, he was only vaguely conscious that the laughing
breath of the young girl had blown it away forever.

The perilous point passed, unconsciously to both of them, they fell into
freer conversation, tacitly avoiding the subject of Mr. Hurlstone's past
reserve only as being less interesting. Hurlstone did not return Miss
Keene's confidences--not because he wished to deceive her, but that he
preferred to entertain her; while she did not care to know his secret
now that it no longer affected their sympathy in other things. It was a
pleasant, innocent selfishness, that, however, led them along, step by
step, to more uncertain and difficult ground.

In their idle, happy walk they had strayed towards the beach, and had
come upon a large stone cross with its base half hidden in sand, and
covered with small tenacious, sweet-scented creepers, bearing a pale
lilac blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstone
pointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church on
the edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with strings
of gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votive
offerings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled with their
new faith.

"I don't like to worry that good old Padre," he continued, with a light
smile, "but I'm afraid that they pre