cool airs of a softly breathing
ocean. The world, on these mornings, had a sparkling unreality, the
cold, cobalt sea stretching to sun-lit isles, and beyond, the vividly
painted shore,--the setting of luxury had never been so complete. And
the woman who sat opposite him seemed, like one of her own nectarines,
to be the fruit that crowned it all.

Why not yield to the enchantment? Why rebel, when nobody else
complained? Were it not more simple to accept what life sent in its
orderly course instead of striving for an impossible and shadowy ideal?
Very shadowy indeed! And to what end were his labours in that smoky,
western city, with its heedless Dalton Streets, which went their
inevitable ways? For he had the choice.

To do him justice, he was slow in arriving at a realization that seemed
to him so incredible, so preposterous. He was her rector! And he had
accepted, all unconsciously, the worldly point of view as to Mrs.
Larrabbee,--that she was reserved for a worldly match. A clergyman's
wife! What would become of the clergyman? And yet other clergymen had
married rich women, despite the warning of the needle's eye.

She drove him in her buckboard to Jordan's Pond, set, like a jewel in the
hills, and even to the deep, cliff bordered inlet beyond North East,
which reminded her, she said, of a Norway fiord. And sometimes they
walked together through wooded paths that led them to beetling shores,
and sat listening to the waves crashing far below. Silences and
commonplaces became the rule instead of the eager discussions with which
they had begun,--on such safer topics as the problem of the social work
of modern churches. Her aromatic presence, and in this setting,
continually disturbed him: nature's perfumes, more definable,
--exhalations of the sea and spruce,--mingled with hers, anaesthetics
compelling lethargy. He felt himself drowning, even wished to drown,
--and yet strangely resisted.

"I must go to-morrow," he said.

"To-morrow--why? There is a dinner, you know, and Mrs. Waterman wished
so particularly to meet you."

He did not look at her. The undisguised note of pain found an echo
within him. And this was Mrs. Larrabbee!

"I am sorry, but I must," he told her, and she may not have suspected the
extent to which the firmness was feigned.

"You have promised to make other visits? The Fergusons,--they said they
expected you."

"I'm going west--home," he said, and the word sounded odd.

"At this season! But