in
time; and he waited with all the old love in his soul. And as for
Lilian, the old affection was with her too--the affection of childhood
and girlhood, the deep and grateful feeling associated with all her
life--but it struggled and wrestled with a novel power that while it
promised pleasure gave only pain. It made her suffer to see John
suffer: she hurt him as little as she could, but for the life of her
she was able to do no differently. She thought it would be better for
him if she should die; and when she found his great sad eyes fastened
on her, with their longing for her return to him, she wished to
disappear out of the world and his memory together. She grew whiter
and thinner, more tired and sore at heart, all the time, till the two
years that had been fixed as the period of their engagement had
passed--grew so transparent and spiritual that sometimes, as John hung
over her in despair, he felt as if, instead of being bound to a dead
woman, he were already bound to an angel.

One evening, after an absence, Reyburn came in as John sat reading by
Lilian's side: he brushed away the book and insisted on their playing
an odd new game of cards, and Lilian unaccountably brightened and
sparkled and laughed, as in the old time, for more than an hour; and
as he left them at last he came back to declare his belief that a
change was all Lilian needed--other climates, other scenes. "Come,
Sterling," said he, "my little yacht, the Beachbird, sails on a cruise
next week. I will have a cabin fitted up for Miss Lilian if you will
take her and her mother and come along. The house can keep itself;
your clerks can keep your books; we shall all escape the east winds.
It will be a certain cure for her, and do you good yourself."

And talking of it lightly at first, presently it grew feasible--all
the more so that Helen and her father were spending their second
winter down there in one of those "summer isles of Eden," and word
could be sent to them in advance to be in readiness to join the
Beachbird. And the end of all the talk was that at the close of the
next week John's business had been left in the hands of others, and
John and Lilian and her mother were on the Beachbird's deck as she
slipped down the harbor.

Mr. Reyburn's prophecy proved true: whether the sea-breeze fanned
Lilian into fresh life, whether there were healing balms in the
perpetual summer through which they sailed, or whether she abandoned
herself to the plea