d from her former rambles of
the years before, she had a way of recalling it and saying: "It was
here, John, we sat on the rock and you brought me water from the spring
in a cup of leaves; let's do it again for old-time's sake. It was here,
John, we seined the minnows; it was here you taught me the jack-knife
dive; it was here you picked me up, oh, so tenderly! and with so much
anxious solicitude, I have half a mind to fall again" until John grew
timid, and the next time begged Mary to come with them, and when she
said it was impossible, sought to keep with the other members of the
party, but Rosamond was the better manager and their solitary rambles
continued.

A day or two before she was to return home, as they sat resting on a
moss-grown rock in a secluded cove far up the mountainside, she placed
her hand over John's and said:

"Tell me, John, what you were going to ask the night of the dance so
many years ago, when you brought me out to the arbor and we found
Dorothy and Howard Bradford there?"

"I thought I loved you and was going to ask you to be my wife."

"Why didn't you, John--do; didn't you love me?"

"I had a horrid dream about you and before I recovered from it you
became offended and returned home. I never saw you afterwards until Mary
and I were married."

"So you let a dream shatter my dreams of love and happiness."

"You should not say that, Rosamond. You are married and to a man of your
own choosing and I to the wife of my choice."

"Mine was a marriage of convenience; I did it believing that I could
manage my husband and, with even the crude material at hand, make a man.
I am regretting it even now after less than four months. He either has
less sense than I thought or is harder to manage. I do not even respect
him and if you were still single and wished it, I could get a divorce.
Why did you not follow me home, John? That's what I expected you to do."

"Don't; such talk is not right and you must not say such things to me.
Even though I loved you once, I now love only one woman in the world and
that is Mary. Were we both single, I could not marry you unless Mary was
married to some other man. There is no use talking about such things;
they are a forgotten past. I shall not go out with you again; I dare
not; you are a fascinating woman and the old love might return."

"You coward!"

John rose from his seat and, deathly pale, walked ahead of Rosamond down
the mountainside and she, pale and t