y and parting company for ever on the dancing
water. Chris watched them until they vanished; then she turned and
looked at him, to find that he grew very pale and agitated. Even his
humility had hardly foreseen this decisive answer after the yielding
attitude Chris first assumed when she suffered him to hold her hand. He
looked into her face inquiring and frightened. The silence that followed
was broken by continued laughter and shouting from Timothy. Then Martin
tried to connect the child's first merriment with the simultaneous
change in the mood of the woman he worshipped, but failed to do so.

At that moment Chris spoke. She made utterance under the weight of great
emotion and with evident desire to escape the necessity of a direct
negative, while yet leaving her refusal of Martin's offer implicit and
distinct.

"I mind when a scatter of paper twinkled down this river just like them
dead blossoms. Clem thrawed them, an' they floated away to the sea, past
daffadowndillies an' budding lady-ferns an' such-like. 'T was a li'l bit
of poetry he'd made up to please me--and I, fule as I was, didn't say
the right thing when he axed me what I thought; so Clem tore the rhymes
in pieces an' sent them away. He said the river would onderstand. An'
the river onderstands why I dropped them dead blossoms in, tu. A wise,
ancient stream, I doubt. An' you 'm wise, tu; an' can take my answer
wi'out any more words, as will awnly make both our hearts ache."

"Not even if I wait patiently? You couldn't marry me, dear Chris? You
couldn't get to love me?"

"I couldn't marry you. I'm a widow in heart for all time. But I thank
God for the gude-will of such a man as you. I cherish it and 't will be
dear to me all my life. But I caan't come to 'e, so doan't ax it."

"Yet you're young to live for a memory, Chris."

"Better 'n nothing. And listen; I'll tell you this, if 't will make my
'No' sound less hard to your ear. I loves you--I loves you better 'n any
living man 'cept Will, an' not less than I love even him. I wish I could
bring 'e a spark of joy by marryin' you, for you was allus very gude,
an' thought kindly of Clem when but few did. I'd marry you if 't was
awnly for that; yet it caan't never be, along o' many reasons. You must
take that cold comfort, Martin."

He sighed, then spoke.

"So be it, dear one. I shall never ask again. God knows what holds you
back if you can even love me a little."

"Ess, God knaws--everything."

"I