e," he said. "Let's find a canoe and get out under the stars."

Sylvia went for a wrap, and they had soon embarked, skimming along in
silence for a time till they were free of the shores. There was no moon,
but the stars shone brilliantly; a fitful west wind scarcely ruffled the
water. Along the deep-shadowed shores the dock lanterns twinkled, and
above and beyond them the lamps of the cottages flashed and vanished.
Dan paddled steadily with a skilled, splashless stroke. The paddle sank
noiselessly and rose to the accompaniment of a tinkling drip as the
canoe parted the waters. There is nothing like a canoe flight under
stars to tranquilize a troubled and perplexed spirit, and Dan was soon
won to the mood he sought. It seemed to him that Sylvia, enfolded in the
silvery-dim dusk in the bow, was a part of the peace of sky and water.
They were alone, away from the strifes and jars of the world, shut in
together as completely as though they had been flung back for unreckoned
ages into a world of unbroken calm. The peace that Wordsworth sought and
sang crept into their blood, and each was sensible that the other knew
and felt it and that it was grateful to them both.

Sylvia spoke, after a time, of immaterial things, or answered his
questions as to the identity of the constellations mapped in the clear
arch above.

"I dream sometimes of another existence," she said, "as I suppose every
one does, when I knew a quiet lake that held the stars as this does. I
even think I remember how it looked in winter, with the ice gleaming in
the moonlight, and of snow coming and the keen winds piling it in
drifts. It's odd, isn't it? those memories we have that are not
memories. The metempsychosis idea must have some substance. We have all
been somebody else sometime, and we clutch at the shadows of our old
selves, hardly believing they are shadows."

"It's a good deal a matter of imagination, isn't it?" asked Dan, idling
with the paddle.

"Oh, but I haven't a bit of that. That's one thing I'm not troubled
with, and I'm sorry for it. When I look up at the stars I think of the
most hideous formula for calculating their distances from the earth.
When I read in a novel that it was a night of stars, I immediately
wonder what particular stars. It used to make dear Grandfather Kelton
furiously indignant to find a moon appearing in novels contrary to the
almanac; he used to check up all the moons, and he once thought of
writing a thesis on th