He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a pace to see how fair she looks,
Then, proud, runs up to kiss her."

"Shall we sit here?" says Dysart, indicating a soft mound of grass that
overlooks the bay. "You must be tired after last night's dancing."

"I _am_ tired," says she, sinking upon the soft cushion that Nature has
provided with a little sigh of satisfaction.

"Perhaps I should not have asked--have extracted--a promise from you to
come here," says Dysart, with contrition in his tone. "I should have
remembered you would be overdone, and that a long walk like this----"

"Would be the very thing to restore me to a proper state of health," she
interrupts him, with the prettiest smile. "No, don't pretend you are
sorry you brought me here. You know it is the sheerest hypocrisy on your
part. You are glad, that you brought me here, I hope, and
I"--deliberately--"am glad that you did."

"Do you mean that?" says Dysart, gravely. He had not seated himself
beside her, and is now looking down her from a goodly height. "Do you
know why I brought you?"

"To bring me back again as fresh as a daisy," suggests she, with a laugh
that is spoiled in its birth by a glance from him.

"No, I did not think of you at all. I thought only of myself," says
Dysart, speaking a little quickly now. "Call that selfish if you
will--and yet----"

He stops short, and comes closer to her. "To think in that way was to
think of you too. Joyce, there is at all events one thing you do
know--that I love you."

Miss Kavanagh nods her head silently.

"There is one thing, too, that I know," says Dysart now with a little
tremble in his voice, "that you do not love me!"

She is silent.

"You are honest," says he, after a pause. "Still"--looking at her--"if
there wasn't hope one would know. Though the present is empty for me, I
cannot help dwelling on the thought that the future may
contain--something!"

"The future is so untranslatable," says she, with a little evasion.

"Tell me this at least," says Dysart, very earnestly, bending over her
with the air of one determined to sift his chances to the last grain,
"you like me?"

"Oh, yes."

"Better than Courtenay, for example?" with a fleeting smile that fails
to disguise the real anxiety he is enduring.

"What an absurd question!"

"Than Dicky Brown?"

"Yes."

But here she lifts her head and gazes at him in a startled way that
speaks of quick suspicion. There is somethi