With as much majestic grandeur as a small craft can exhibit, the "Eolus" steamed down the river and out into the bay.

The water was not quite so smooth as Carlita had pictured it, but rippled and danced in the sunlight, reflecting the opal tints in blinding splendor. White sails were dotted here and there over the inviting surface, while along the gray, winter-worn shore the golden rifts were piled up, lending a fictitious beauty that was entrancing.

It would have been sufficient to fill an artist's soul with rapture just to lie idly at full length on one of those superb couches, living in the exquisite loveliness of Dame Nature, and Carlita stood gazing about her in a sort of rapt wonder, her eyes wandering slowly from the superbly appointed deck—with Mrs. Chalmers sitting over next the starboard rail, with old Colonel Washburn bending over her in a cavalier devotion, and Jessica to the port, with Dudley Maltby sitting facing her—to the water, and on down the bay out to where a white line of sand stretched alluringly, sparkling like myriads of scintillating diamonds.

An absolute silence seemed to infold the scene, broken only by the gentle caress of the water upon the sides of the tiny ship—a silence that made it all appear like that mythical experience of Ulysses when he listened to the seductive voices of the sirens. Carlita clasped her hands in breathless delight.

"I will be happy today," she murmured, a trifle hysterically. "I will put all past and future away, and be happy for this one little day as if there had been no yesterday and would be no tomorrow. This day shall encompass time, and I will feel the full joy of living once!"

As if in answer to her, a voice spoke in her ear:

"Come and let me make you comfortable. See, I have placed a couch for you where the sun will shine upon you, but will not be in your eyes, and I have brought some books to read to you. Will you come?"

She turned at once and obeyed, half defying her own sensitiveness in her efforts to yield to that determination to be happy.

It was a broad, long couch, upholstered luxuriously in a magnificent dark green that contrasted perfectly with the tones of the sea. She threw herself upon it, allowing her delight almost passionate play in her features, and permitted Leith to pile pillows under and about her in gorgeous profusion; then, when she looked as comfortable as even he could desire, he drew up to her side a very low chair and took a volume out of his pocket.

"Are you fond of Tennyson?" he asked. "If you have a favorite, name it. I believe most of them are in the library."

"Is it Tennyson you have there?"

"Yes."

"I know my favorite so well, let me hear yours. Read me what you like."

She said it so sweetly, so tenderly that he flushed with pleasure. It was so different from her manner of late that it touched him. He might have been still more impressed if he had been able to read that passionate cry in her heart that kept repeating itself over and over again:

"I will be happy for this one little day—I will be happy."

At first she could scarcely hear the sound of his voice for the cry in her own heart, but gradually it ceased under the soothing influence of his tone, and as if in answer to a prayer for mercy, the awful future was shut out completely, pitifully hidden in the idly passing present.

He turned the leaves of the book for a moment, then came to that sweet old poem that has stirred the heart of every lover of Tennyson with sympathy, "Locksley Hall," and read it as only a man with a voice like his can read. When he came to the last line, he thought she was sleeping, she had grown so quiet, so motionless; but after a moment of silence she stirred slightly and said in a low, dreamy tone:

"Do you believe that—that which you read:

He thought he saw the trend of her thoughts, and answered, softly:

"Who can say? We are so often mistaken in the language of our hearts. How should we know, when we listen to it for the first time, whether the love is that of admiration, of sympathy, of the loneliness of our own souls, of the desire to be loved, or of such love as that to which Tennyson refers? When that love comes, Carlita, the 'love that is love for evermore,' the least comprehensive of us will know, will understand, though we may have erred on former occasions."

She did not reply, but lay there silent, motionless, her eyes almost closed, but looking out from under the lids dreamily at the gently changing world, her beautiful hand lying palm upward on one of the sofa pillows like a rose-leaf that has turned toward the sun.

If he had not loved her before, his artistic soul would have loved her then for the very unconscious grace, the poetical charm of her lovely person.

He feared that he had saddened her, and so turned to something in lighter vein, his well-modulated voice making music with the waves.

"What a poem life would be if all the days were like to this," she said when he had finished.

"It would lose its charm through lack of contrast," he returned, smiling. "How glaring the sun would grow if there were no shadow. How dull the water would appear if there were no land beyond. How oppressive the silence would become if the hum of wider, broader, busier life were stilled forever. And, over all, how palsied and colorless would the whole world be if there were nothing beyond, nothing but the limited stretch of a few brief years, with no hope of the marvelous universe to come, governed by the supreme power of Perfect Love. We have learned something beyond lotus-eating in this kindergarten in which God has placed us, and we love the languid hour of absolute repose, because we have been so long in the schoolroom, learning the lessons which He has set for us, lessons of bitterness and strife, as well as those of contentment and love. Life without contrast would be as dull, as inartistic, as cloying as a picture of sunshine without a shadow, as a poem without a strain of sadness."

Her eyes wandered toward him, seeing all the earnestness of his countenance, all the absolute belief in the future that his words implied. She turned them away again, out over the water, but even there she saw him reflected in her imagination, his yachting cap pushed back, his face flushed, his eyes gravely earnest, as handsome a picture of perfect manhood as the hand of Divinity had ever painted.

Not long afterward they were summoned down to luncheon, a merry meal enjoyed by all; but it was with a sense of relief and rest that Carlita wandered back to her couch again as soon as she could leave the others.

The afternoon was waning. Already a hazy red was beginning to glow in the western sky, that had changed from gold to pink in opalescent splendor. The wind was freshening with the dying sun, and the caress of the waves licked higher upon the dainty craft.

Leith went below and had wraps brought in profusion; but about Carlita he placed them himself, tucking them in carefully that she might not feel the influence of the breeze.

"You will not care to get home too early?" he asked, caressingly. "The moon will be superb, and there will be no roughness to speak of. You will remain a while?"

"I wish it would never end," she returned, dreamily.

He smiled with the delight of a lover, that slow, sweet smile for which she had begun to watch with pleasure.

"You don't know what happiness your words give me when I remember that I have been your only companion," he said softly. "How beautiful you are as you lie there with that crimson glow just touching you! You are a tropical plant, Carlita, and should be grown in a tropical country. Warmth suits you. The bewildering delight of flaming colors make you like some superb bird of plumage. You will love Italy with a sort of savage delight, I fancy. You have never traveled?"

"No."

"What a world of pleasure there is in store for you, what almost rapture! Our own country, while beautiful, has none of the mythological and historical memories that make other countries a constant poem. One gets so weary of the newness and glitter of it all, just as we should have grown of that gorgeous old sun but for this Heaven-sent gloom. There is a greater element of romance in most of us than practical, particularly we who are removed from the sordid compulsion of living-getting. We want to fancy ourselves once in awhile as knights of the olden time, performing deeds of valor for our Helens of Troy. See! The sun is going out. He has illuminated the old brown shore to positive glory with his good-night kiss. Do you remember the sweet old poem of Percy Shelley?"

He leaned forward, with that beautiful smile in his eyes, and repeated it in his musical voice:

He was looking down at her still with the smile in his eyes, the light of incalculable love, and she was looking up at him, totally unconscious of the expression upon her tremulous lips and in the depths of her beautiful eyes, totally unconscious of the wistful permission that expression contained.

And then suddenly—how, neither he nor she could tell—as the laughter of the others below reached them, he leaned forward and his lips were pressed upon hers, gently, yet lingeringly, lovingly, and then he lifted his head—unrepulsed!