s man, and teach him to love her? To most women such a
thought more or less involves the idea of marriage, and that change of
status which for the most part they consider desirable. But Jess did not
think much of that: what she did think of was the blessed possibility of
being able to lay down her life, as it were, in the life of another--of
at last finding somebody who understood her and whom she could
understand, who would cut the shackles that bound down the wings of
her genius, so that she could rise and bear him with her as, in Bulwer
Lytton's beautiful story, Zoe would have borne her lover. Here at length
was a man who _understood_, who was something more than an animal, and
who possessed the god-like gift of brains, the gift that had been a
curse rather than a blessing to her, lifting her above the level of
her sex and shutting her off as by iron doors from the comprehension of
those around her. Ah! if only this perfect love of which she had read
so much would come to him and her, life might perhaps grow worth the
living.

It is a curious thing, but in such matters most men never learn wisdom
from experience. A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it
is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most
harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive. He might
have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with
such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire
from them himself, to say nothing of setting her alight: he might have
known that to bring all the weight of his cultivated mind to bear on her
mind, to take the deepest interest in her studies, to implore her to let
him see the poetry Bessie told him she wrote, but which she would
show to no living soul, and to evince the most evident delight in her
singing, were one and all hazardous things to do. Yet he did them and
thought no harm.

As for Bessie, she was delighted that her sister should have found
anybody to whom she cared to talk or who could understand her. It never
occurred to her that Jess might fall in love. Jess was the last person
to fall in love. Nor did she calculate what the results might be to
John. As yet, at any rate, she had no interest in Captain Niel--of
course not.

And so things went on pleasantly enough to all concerned in this drama
till one fine day when the storm-clouds began to gather. John had been
about the farm as usual till dinner time, after