at the top, so that he pushed it a little deeper
into the gravel; and then occurred a tiny coincidence: the elderly
man, passing, let fall the apple from his hand, and it rolled
toward the pin just as Corliss managed to secure the latter. For
an instant, though the situation was so absolutely commonplace, so
casual, Cora had a wandering consciousness of some mysterious
tensity; a feeling like the premonition of a crisis very near at
hand. This sensation was the more curious because nothing whatever
happened. The man got his apple, joined in the child's laughter,
and went on.

"What was it you asked me?" said Corliss, lifting his head again
and restoring the pin to his tie. He gazed carelessly at the back
of the grandsire, disappearing beyond a bush at a bend in the
path.

"Who was that man?" said Cora with some curiosity.

"That old fellow? I haven't an idea. You see I've been away from
here so many years I remember almost no one. Why?"

"I don't know, unless it was because I had an idea you were
thinking of him instead of me. You didn't listen to what I said."

"That was because I was thinking so intensely of you," he began
instantly. "A startlingly vivid thought of you came to me just
then. Didn't I look like a man in a trance?"

"What was the thought?"

"It was a picture: I saw you standing under a great bulging sail,
and the water flying by in moonlight; oh, a moon and a night such
as you have never seen! and a big blue headland looming up against
the moon, and crowned with lemon groves and vineyards, all
sparkling with fireflies--old watch-towers and the roofs of white
villas gleaming among olive orchards on the slopes--the sound of
mandolins----"

"Ah!" she sighed, the elderly man, his grandchild, and his apple
well-forgotten.

"Do you think it was a prophecy?" he asked.

"What do _you_ think?" she breathed. "That was really what I asked
you before."

"I think," he said slowly, "that I'm in danger of forgetting that
my `hidden treasure' is the most important thing in the world."

"In great danger?" The words were not vocal.

He moved close to her; their eyes met again, with increased
eagerness, and held fast; she was trembling, visibly; and her
lips--parted with her tumultuous breathing--were not far from his.

"Isn't any man in great danger," he said, "if he falls in love
with you?"

"Well?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

Toward four o'clock that afternoon, a very thin, fair young man
shakily heave