ley, the white sparkle of the river.

'It reminds me a little of Norway. The same austere and frugal
beauty--the same bare valley floors. But no pines, no peaks, no fiords!'

'No!' said Rose scornfully, 'we are not Norway, and we are not
Switzerland. To prevent disappointment, I may at once inform you that
we have no glaciers, and that there is perhaps only one place in the
district where a man who is not an idiot could succeed in killing
himself.'

He looked at her, calmly smiling.

'You are angry,' he said, 'because I make comparisons. You are wholly on
a wrong scent. I never saw a scene in the world that pleased me half
as much as this bare valley, that gray roof'--and he pointed to Burwood
among its trees-'and this knoll of rocky ground.'

His look traveled back to her, and her eyes sank beneath it. He threw
himself down on the short grass beside her.

'It rained this morning,' she still had the spirit to murmur under her
breath.

He took not the smallest heed.

'Do you know,' he said--and his voice dropped--'can you guess at all why
I am here to-day?'

'You had never seen the Lakes,' she repeated in a prim voice, her eyes
still cast down, the corners of her mouth twitching. 'You stopped at
Whinborough, intending to take the pass over to Ullswater, thence
to make your way to Ambleside and Keswick--or was it to Keswick and
Ambleside?'

She looked up innocently. But the flashing glance she met abashed her
again.

'_Taquine!_' he said, 'but you shall not laugh me out of countenance.
If I said all that to you just now, may I be forgiven. One purpose, one
only, brought me from Norway, forbade me to go to Scotland, drew me to
Whinborough, guided me up your valley--the purpose of seeing your face!'

It could not be said at that precise moment that he had attained it.
Rather she seemed bent on hiding that face quite away from him. It
seemed to him an age before, drawn by the magnetism of his look, her
hands dropped, and she faced him, crimson, her breath fluttering a
little. Then she would have spoken, but he would not let her. Very
tenderly and quietly his hand possessed itself of hers as he knelt
beside her.

'I have been in exile for two months--you sent me. I saw that I troubled
you in London. You thought I was pursuing you--pressing you. Your manor
said "Go!" and I went. But do you think that for one day, or hour, or
moment I have thought of anything else in those Norway woods but of you
and of this b