s towards Clarks' farm, in the hope that I might espy Rita
somewhere between,--yet half hoping that I would not, for I was
browsing in the changing delights and sensations of the thoughts which
my solitariness engendered.

For one thing;--I had made the discovery the night before that Miss
Grant's Christian name was Mary.

I had found a torn label on the beach; one, evidently, from a
travelling bag. It read:

Miss Mary Grant,
Passenger
to Golden Crescent Bay, B. C. Canada.

ex San Francisco, per P. C. S. S. Co. to Vancouver.

That was all.

I lay on my back on the rocks, turning the name over in my mind.

Mary.... It did not sound very musical. It was a
plain-Jane-and-no-nonsense kind of name.

I started in to make excuses to myself for it. Why I did so, I have no
idea, but I discovered myself at it.

Mary was a Bible name. Yes!--it had that in its favour.

Famous queens had been called Mary. Yes!

The lady who owned the world-famous "little lamb" was called Mary.

And there was "Mary, Mary, quite contrary."

Why, of course! there were plenty of wonderful Marys. Notwithstanding,
I could not altogether shake off the feeling of regret that came to me
with the discovery that the young lady over the way was called Mary.

Had her name been Marguerite, or Dorothea, Millicent or even Rosemary,
I would have been contented and would have considered the name a
fitting one,--but to be common-or-garden Mary!

Oh, well!--what mattered it anyway? The name did not detract from the
attractiveness of her long, wavy, golden hair, nor did it change the
colour or lessen the transparency of her eyes. It did not interfere
with her deft fingers as they travelled so artistically over the
keyboard of her piano; although I kept wishing, in a half-wishful way,
that it could have changed her tantalising and exasperating demeanour
toward me.

From the beginning, we had played antagonists, and from the beginning
this playing antagonists had been distasteful to me.

What was it in me? I wondered,--what was it in her that caused the
mental ferment? I had not the slightest notion, unless it were a
resentfulness in me at being taken only for what I, myself, had chosen
to become,--store-clerk in an out-of-the-way settlement; or an
annoyance in her because one of my station should place himself on
terms of social equality with every person he happened to meet.

I was George Bremner to her. True! Then,--she wa