eamy brow
the raven hair escaped in countless tendril-like ringlets, and whose
smile, as she seemed to speak to some one while she stood in the low
sunset light, had a radiance of its own. As Lilian looked upon this
dazzling picture, backed by the golden and rosy sky, the golden and
rosy waters, the palm-plumes tossing in the purpling distance, the
silver flashing of the oars, the quiver came again, and she gave the
glass to Reyburn, who held it steadily till the boat was within
hailing distance, and who himself at last handed the shining creature
on board and led her to Lilian and her mother. And then the Beachbird
slowly spread her wings, and with her new burden softly floated away
into the dusk, and the great colors faded, and the stars one after
another seemed to drop low and hang from the heavens like lamps, and
rich odors floated off from the receding land, and they moved along
folded in the dark splendor of the tropical night. But in some vague
way every soul on board the little yacht felt the presence of another
influence, and that, though they sailed in the same waters as
yesterday, it was in another atmosphere; for an element had come among
them that should produce a transformation as powerful as though it
wrought a chemic change of their atoms.

Lilian and Reyburn still paced the deck, after their custom, when the
first greetings were over, leaving Helen and her father with John for
the present. But as the conversation dropped more personal subjects,
and John and his father were discussing political matters, Helen began
to look about, and chiefly she surveyed Lilian. And as she saw the
transparent skin, the vivid flush, the restless air--saw the way
Reyburn had, as he walked with her, as he bent to her, as he folded
her shawl about her--the way he had of absorbing her, a hasty
remembrance of the night when he stooped over Lilian's hand came to
her, and she remembered also how she herself had hated him. "The man
has bewitched her," said Helen an hour afterward--an hour of watching
and puzzling. "She is fond of John still: she cannot bear to break his
heart--she would rather break her own--and she is dying of her
attraction to the other." As she sat there, still observing them,
wondering what could be done, she turned and laid her arm on her
brother's shoulder, and rested her head beside it with her eyes full
of tears. And at the movement John bent and kissed her forehead, and
she saw that he himself was at la