this. _Is_ there, sweetheart?"

"No," she said.

"And if there was?"

"Can you ask?"

"Then come to breakfast, heart of my heart!--the moments are flying very
swiftly, and there is only this day left--until to-morrow. Listen! I
hear the steward moving like a gray rat in the pantry. Can we endure a
steward in Eden?"

"Only during breakfast," she said, laughing. "I smell the wheaten
flapjacks, and, oh, I am famished!"

There have been other breakfasts--Barmecide breakfasts compared with
their first crust broken in love.

But they ate--oh, indeed, they ate everything before them, from
flapjacks to the piles of little, crisp trout. And they might have
called for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing,
presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford's heart stopped,
and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake.

She, too, suddenly apprehensive, sat rigid, the smile dying out in her
eyes; and when he finally took the envelope and tore it open, she
shivered.

"_Crawford, Sagamore Club_:

"Ophir has consolidated with Steel Plank. You take charge
of London office. Make arrangements to catch steamer leaving
a week from to-morrow. Garcide and I will be at Sagamore
to-night. JAMES J. CRAWFORD."

He sat staring at the telegram; she, vaguely apprehensive for the safety
of this new happiness of hers, clasped her hands tightly in her lap and
waited.

"Any answer, sir?" asked the steward.

Crawford took the offered telegram blank and mechanically wrote:

"Instructions received. Will expect you and Garcide to-night.
JAMES CRAWFORD."

She sat, twisting her fingers on her knees, watching him in growing
apprehension. The steward took the telegram.

Crawford looked at her with a ghastly smile.

They rose together, instinctively, and walked to the porch.

"Oh yes," he said, under his breath, "such happiness was too perfect.
Magic is magic--it never lasts."

"What is it?" she asked, faintly.

He picked up his cap, which was lying on a chair.

"Let's get away, somewhere," he said. "Do you mind coming with
me--alone?"

"No," she said.

There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle and
setting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river,
side by side.

Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, they
embarked on S