ing his soft
felt hat. Even in the surprise of the moment she was conscious of a
quick effort to keep out of her countenance the full measure of the
joy she felt at this unexpected meeting with Hugh Gordon. But she was
not successful enough to hide all signs of the pleasure that swept
through her and shone in her smile of welcome.

"Will you let me cross the ferry with you?" he said as he guided her
through the crowd to a vantage point near the gate. "I did not go to
the office, and I shall not go there again, because I know what orders
Felix gave concerning me and I will not subject you to any unpleasant
experience with his violent temper."

Henrietta looked at him in surprise, wondering how, since there was
evidently bitter enmity between the two men, this one should have such
intimate knowledge of the characteristics that had but lately appeared
in the other.

"But the ferry boat," he was saying, with one of the smiles that so
rarely lighted his serious countenance, "is nobody's private property
and you are the only one who can forbid me to ride across the bay in
it at just the time when you are going home."

He must have read encouragement rather than objection in her manner,
for the next evening he was waiting for her again, and by the end of
the week it had become a tacit understanding between them that they
should meet thus and take together the ride across the shining evening
water. Golden red it glowed and sparkled all about them and spread a
radiant path toward the red and gold of the May sunset. Behind them
Manhattan reared its mighty, tawny-yellow walls and towers through the
golden haze--Mammon rising from the waves, with feet lapped in the
rose-gold waters and front ablaze with the diamond dazzle of a
thousand sunset-lighted windows.

It was the month of May, nature's month of marvels, when with her
magic wand she strikes upon earth, and tree, and plant, and human
heart, and the indwelling, everlasting life and youth gush forth in
countless streams of leaf and bloom and song and leaping spirit. All
through the marvelous month these two rode back and forth every day
across the enchanted waters. For it was not long until she began to
find him waiting for her in the morning also, at the door of the
ferry-house in St. George.

All the world was robed in the young beauty of the spring, but
Henrietta Marne soon discovered that for her companion it had but
slight appeal. If she, thrilled by the pageant of