re gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me!
What shall I do?"

"Take these colors and make me a picture," I suggested. Generally, this
was a prized privilege, but to-day it did not attract; she turned away,
and a few moments after I saw her going down to the end of the
plank-walk, where she stood gazing wistfully toward the ocean. There she
staid all day, going into camp with Drollo, and refusing to come to
dinner in spite of old Dominga's calls and beckonings. At last the
patient old grandmother went down herself to the end of the long walk
where they were, with some bread and venison on a plate. Felipa ate but
little, but Drollo, after waiting politely until she had finished,
devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat
back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake
of memory. Drollo's hunger was of the chronic kind; it seemed impossible
either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about
him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he
knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just
before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the marsh with the tide,
old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails. Felipa sprang up
joyfully; I thought she would spring into the boat in her eagerness.
What did she receive for her long vigil? A short word or two; that was
all. Christine and Edward had quarreled.

How do lovers quarrel ordinarily? But I should not ask that, for these
were no ordinary lovers: they were extraordinary.

"You should not submit to her caprices so readily," I said the next day
while strolling on the barren with Edward. (He was not so much cast
down, however, as he might have been.)

"I adore the very ground her foot touches, Kitty."

"I know it. But how will it end?"

"I will tell you: some of these days I shall win her, and then--she will
adore me."

Here Felipa came running after us, and Edward immediately challenged her
to a race: a game of romps began. If Christine had been looking from her
window she might have thought he was not especially disconsolate over
her absence; but she was not looking. She was never looking out of
anything or for anybody. She was always serenely content where she was.
Edward and Felipa strayed off among the pine-trees, and gradually I lost
sight of them. But as I sat sketching an hour afterward Edward came into
view, carrying the child in