* * *

The M.P.s gave a concert at the barracks that night and Mrs. Hill and
her Major went to it, as well as everyone else of any importance in
town except Violet and Spencer. They sat on Major Hill's verandah and
watched the moon rising over the bluffs and making milk-white
reflections in the prairie lakes.

"It seems a year of misery since last night," sighed Violet happily.

"You couldn't have been quite as miserable as I was," said Spencer
earnestly. "You were everything--absolutely everything to me. Other
men have little rills and driblets of affection for sisters and
cousins and aunts, but everything in me went out to you. Do you
remember you told me the first time we met that love would be a
revelation to me? It has been more. It has been a new gospel. I hardly
dared hope you could care for me. Even yet I don't know why you do."

"I love you," said Violet gravely, "because you are you."

Than which, of course, there could be no better reason.

The Waking of Helen

Robert Reeves looked somewhat curiously at the girl who was waiting on
him at his solitary breakfast. He had not seen her before, arriving at
his summer boarding house only the preceding night.

It was a shabby farmhouse on the inland shore of a large bay that was
noted for its tides, and had wonderful possibilities of light and
shade for an impressionist. Reeves was an enthusiastic artist. It
mattered little to him that the boarding accommodations were most
primitive, the people uncultured and dull, the place itself utterly
isolated, as long as he could revel in those transcendent sunsets and
sunrises, those marvellous moonlights, those wonderful purple shores
and sweeps of shimmering blue water.

The owner of the farm was Angus Fraser, and he and his wife seemed to
be a reserved, uncouth pair, with no apparent interest in life save to
scratch a bare living out of their few stony acres. He had an
impression that they were childless and was at a loss to place this
girl who poured his tea and brought in his toast. She did not resemble
either Fraser or his wife. She was certainly not beautiful, being very
tall and rather awkward, and dressed in a particularly unbecoming dark
print wrapper. Her luxuriant hair was thick and black, and was coiled
in a heavy knot at the nape of her neck. Her features were delicate
but irregular, and her skin was very brown. Her eyes attracted
Reeves's notice especially; they were large and dark