This characteristic note, the first that he had ever received from her, reached Bayard by mail, a few days after his call at the cottage of the Flying Jib.

He sat down and wrote at once:—

Helen frowned a little when she read this. No Bishop of a diocese, dictating the career of a deaconess, no village rector, guiding some anxious and aimless visiting young lady through the mild dissipations of parish benevolence, could have returned a more business-like, calm, even curt, reply.

The position of a man who may not love a woman and must not invite her to marry him—or, to put it a little differently, who must not love and cannot marry—is one which it seems to be asking too much of women to understand. At all events they seldom or never do. The withdrawals, the feints, the veils and chills and silences, by which a woman in a similar position protects herself, may be as transparent as golden mist to him whom she evades; but the sturdy retreat of a masculine conscience from a too tender or too tempting situation is as opaque as a gravestone to the feminine perception.

Accustomed to be eagerly wooed, Helen did not know what to make of this devotee who did not urge himself even upon her friendship. She had never given any man that treasure before. Like all high-minded women who have not spent themselves in experiments of the sensibilities, Helen regarded her own friendship as valuable. She would have preferred him to show, at least, that he appreciated his privilege. She would have liked him to make friendship as devotedly as those other men had made love to her.

His reserve, his distance, his apparent moodiness, and undoubted ability to live without seeing her except when he got ready to do so, gave her a perplexed trouble more important than pique.

Without ado or delay, she took the next electric car for Mrs. Slip’s.

Bayard received that afternoon, by the familiar hand of Joey Slip, this brief rejoinder:—

“Run on down to the Mainsail Hotel, Joey,” said the minister, writing rapidly. “Find the lady—there will be a good many ladies—and hand her this.”

“Pooh!” retorted this nautical child with a superior air, “Vat ain’t nuffin! She’s good-lookin’ nuff to find off Zheorges in a fog-bank.”

Thus ran the note:—

When Bayard reached her mother’s piazza the next evening, Helen was in the middle of the harbor.

“My daughter is considered a good oarswoman, I believe,” said the Professor with a troubled look. “I know nothing about these matters myself. I confess I wish I did. I have not felt easy about her; she has propelled the craft so far into the stream. I am delighted to see you, Mr. Bayard! I will put another boat at your service—that is—I suppose you understand the use of oars?”

“Better than I do Verbal Inspiration, Professor!” replied Bayard, laughing. “She is rather far out, and the tide has turned.”

He ran down the pier, and leaped into the first boat that he could secure. It happened to be a dory.

“Can you overtake her?” asked her father with a keen look.

“I can try,” replied the young man, smiling.

The Professor heaved a sigh, whether of relief or of anxiety it would not be easy to say, and stood upon the pier watching Bayard’s fine stroke. Mrs. Carruth came clucking anxiously down, and put her hand upon her husband’s arm. Bayard looked at the two elderly people with a strange affectionateness which he did not analyze; feeling, but not acknowledging, a sudden heart-ache for ties which he had never known.

The sun was sinking, and the harbor was a sea of fire. A sea of glass it was not, for there was some wind and more tide. Really, she should not have ventured out so far. He looked over his shoulder as he gained upon her. She had not seen him, and was drifting out. Her oars lay crossed upon her lap. Her eyes were on the sky, which flung out gold and violet, crimson and pale green flame, in bars like the colors of a mighty banner. The harbor took the magnificence, and lifted it upon the hands of the short, uneasy waves.

The two little boats, the pursuing and the pursued, floated in one of those rare and unreal splendors which make this world, for the moment, seem a glorious, painless star, and the chance to live in it an ecstasy.

By the island, half a mile back, perhaps, Jane Granite in a dory rowed by the younger Trawl, silently watched the minister moving with strong strokes across the blazing harbor. Drifting out, with beautiful pose and crossed hands, was the absorbed, unconscious woman whom his racing oars chased down.

Between the glory of the water and the glory of the sky, he gained upon her, overtook her, headed her off, and brought up with a spurt beside her. Jane saw that the minister laid his hand imperiously upon the gunwale of the lady’s boat; and, it seemed, without waiting for her consent, or even lingering to ask for it, he crept into the cockle-shell, and fastened the painter of his dory to the stern. Now, between the color of the sky and the color of the sea, the two were seen to float for a melting moment—

“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran.”

“Ben,” said Jane, “let us put about, will you? I’m a little chilly.”

“Ben?” said Jane again, as they rowed under the dark shadow of the island. “Ben?” with a little loyal effort to make conversation such as lovers know, “did you ever read a poem called Kubla Khan?”

“I hain’t had time to read sence I left the grammar school,” said Ben.

“What’s up with you, anyhow?” he added, after a moment’s sullen reflection.

He looked darkly over Jane’s head towards the harbor’s mouth. At that moment Bayard was tying the painter of the dory to the stern of the shell. Jane did not look back. A slight grayness settled about her mouth; she had the protruding mouth and evident cheek-bones of the consumptive woman of the coast.

“D—— him!” said Ben Trawl.

---

Bayard had indeed crossed into Helen’s boat without so much as saying, By your leave. Her eyes had a dangerous expression, to which he paid no sort of attention.

“Didn’t you know better than to take this shell—so far—with the tide setting out?” he demanded. “Give me those oars!”

“I understand how to manage a boat,” replied the young lady coldly. She did not move.

“Give me those oars!” thundered Bayard.

She looked at him, and gave them.

“Don’t try to move,” he said in a softer voice. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to upset these toys. If you had taken a respectable ocean dory—I can’t see why they don’t provide them at the floats,” he complained, with the nervousness of an uneasy man. “I can manage perfectly where I am. Sit still, Miss Carruth!”

She did not look at him this time, but she sat still. He put about, and rowed steadily. For a few moments they did not exchange a word. Helen had an offended expression. She trailed her hand in the water with something like petulance. Bayard did not watch her.

Captain Hap crossed their course, rowing home in an old green dory full of small bait—pollock and tinkers. He eyed Bayard’s Harvard stroke with surprised admiration. He had seldom seen a person row like that. But he was too old a sailor to say so. As the minister swerved dexterously to starboard to free the painter of his tender from collision with the fisherman, Captain Hap gave utterance to but two words. These were:—

“Short chops!”

“Quite a sea, yes!” called Bayard cheerily.

Captain Hap scanned the keel-boat, the passenger, and the dory in tow, with discrimination.

“Lady shipwrecked?” he yelled, after some reflection.

“No, sir,” answered Helen, smiling in spite of herself; “captured by pirates.”

“Teach ye bet-ter!” howled Captain Hap. “Hadn’t oughter set out in short cho-ops! Hadn’t oughter set out in a craft like that nohow! They palm off them eggshells on boarders for bo-o-oats!”

Helen laughed outright; her eyes met Bayard’s merrily, and, if he had dared to think so, rather humbly.

“I was very angry with you,” she said.

“I can’t help that,” replied Bayard. “Your father and mother were very anxious about you.”

“Really?”

“Naturally. I was a chartered pirate, at any rate.”

“But I was in no sort of danger, you know. You’ve made a great fuss over nothing.”

“Take these oars,” observed Bayard. “Just let me see you row back to the float.”

Helen took the oars, and pulled a few strokes strongly enough. The veins stood out on her soft forehead, and her breath came hard.

“I had no idea the tide was so strong to-night. The wind seems to be the wrong way, too,” she panted.

“It was blowing you straight out to sea,” observed Bayard quietly.

“Shall I take the oars?” he added.

She pulled on doggedly for a few moments. Suddenly she flung them down.

“Why, we are not making any headway at all! We are twisting about, and—going out again.”

“Certainly.”

“It is that heavy dory! You can’t expect me to row two boats at once.”

“The dory does make some difference. But very little. See—she doesn’t draw a teaspoonful of water. Shall I take the oars?”

“If you please,” said Helen meekly.

She gave them up without looking at him, and she was a trifle pale from her exertion. Her hat was off, and the wind made rich havoc of her pretty hair. She was splashed with spray, and her boating-dress was quite wet. Bayard watched her. The sun dropped, and the color on the harbor began to fade.

“I suppose you came for the report?” she asked suddenly. “I stayed in all the afternoon. I couldn’t be expected to wait indefinitely, you know!”

“I could not possibly set the hour. I am much overworked. I should beg your pardon,” said Bayard in his gentlest way.

“You are overworked,” answered Helen, in her candid voice. “And I am an idle, useless woman. It wouldn’t have hurt me a bit to wait your leisure. But I’m not— ... you see ... I’m not used to it.”

“I must remind you again, that I no longer move in good society,” said Bayard, looking straight at her. “You must extend to me as much tolerance as you do to other working men.”

“Yes,” returned Helen; “we always wait a week for a carpenter, and ten days for the plumbers. Anyhow, Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. She’s as snug as a clam in a shell. She says she won’t run away again till I’ve been to see her.”

“How in the world did you manage?” asked Bayard admiringly.

“Oh, I don’t just know,” replied Helen, clasping her hands behind her head; “I made myself lovely, that’s all.”

“That might be enough, I should fancy,” ventured the young man under his breath.

“I took her shopping,” said Helen.

“Took her shopping!”

“Why, yes. She wanted to buy some mourning. She said Johnny’s father had been dead so long, her black was all worn out. She wanted fresh crape. So I took her round the stores, and got her some.”

“Bought her crape?”

“Yes. I got her a crape veil—oh, and a bonnet. She’s the happiest mourner you ever saw. She went back to the Widows’ Home like a spring lamb. She wore a chocolate calico dress with red spots on it, and this crape veil. You can’t think how she looked! But she’s perfectly contented. She’ll stay awhile now. She says they wouldn’t give her any mourning at the Home. She said that was all she had ‘agin’ ’em.’”

“Oh, these widows!” groaned Bayard. “We got two starving women in there by the hardest work, last spring, and one left in a week. She said it was too lonesome; she wanted to live with folks. The other one said it ‘depressed’ her. A Windover widow is a problem in sociology.”

“Johnny’s mother is the other kind of woman; I can see that,” replied Helen. “She sits by herself, and puts her face in her hands. She doesn’t even cry. But she takes it out in crape. You can’t think how happy she is in that veil.”

“Your political economy is horrible,” laughed Bayard, “but your heart is as warm as”—

“I saw Mari and Joey,” interrupted Helen, “and Job Slip. I stayed two hours. Job was as sober as you are. They invited me to dinner. I suppose they were thankful to be rid of that poor old lady.”

“Did you stay?”

“Of course I did. We had pork gravy, and potatoes—oh, and fried cunners. I sat beside Joey. I believe that child is as old as She. He’s a reincarnation of some drowned ancestor who went fishing ages ago, and never came back. Did you ever notice his resemblance to a mackerel?”

“I hadn’t thought of it in that light. I see now what it was. It takes you to discover it!”

“Johnny’s mother looks like a cod, poor thing!” continued Helen. “I don’t wonder. I should think she would. I’m sure I should in her place.”

“You are incorrigible!” said Bayard, laughing in spite of himself. “And yet—you’ve done a better morning’s work than anybody in Windover has done here for a month!”

“I’m going to take tea with Johnny’s mother next week,” observed Helen—“at the Widows’ Home, you know. But I’ve promised to take Joey to the circus first.”

“You are perfectly refreshing!” sighed Bayard delightedly.

“Mr. Bayard,” said Helen, with a change of manner as marked yet as subtle as the motion of the wave that fell to make way for the next, against the bobbing bows of the empty dory, “I had a long talk with Job Slip.”

“You say you found him sober?”

“As sober as a Cesarea trustee. But the way that man feels to you is something you haven’t an idea of. I thought of that verse, you know, about love ‘passing the love of women.’ It is infatuation. It is worship. It is enough to choke you. Why, I cried when I heard him talk! And I don’t cry, you know, very often. And I’m not ashamed to own it, either. It made me feel ashamed to be alive—in such a world—why, Mr. Bayard!” Helen unclasped her hands from the back of her head, and thrust them out towards him, as if they were an argument.

“Why, I thought this earth was a pleasant place! I thought life was a delightful thing!... If the rest of it is like this town—Windover is a world of woe, and you are one of the sons of God to these unhappy people!”

She said this solemnly, more solemnly than he had ever heard her say anything before. He laid down his oars, and took off his hat. He could not answer, and he did not try.

She saw how much moved he was, and she made a little gesture, as if she tossed something that weighed heavily, away.

“You see,” she interposed, “I’ve never done this kind of thing. I’m not a good Professor’s daughter. I didn’t like it. I went through an attack of the missionary spirit when I was fifteen, and had a Sunday-school class—ten big boys; all red, and eight of them freckled. We were naming classes one Sunday, and my boys whistled ‘Yankee Doodle’ when the superintendent prayed, and then asked if they might be called the lilies of the valley. I told them they weren’t fit to be called red sorrel. So after that I gave them up. I’ve never tried it since. I’m of no more use in the world—in this awful world—than the artificial pansies on my hat.”

Helen picked up her straw hat from the bottom of the boat, and tied it on her head, with a little sound that was neither a laugh nor a sigh.

It was growing dark, fast. They were nearly at the float, now. Bayard laid down his oars. The headlights were leaping out all over the harbor. The wind had gone down with the sun. Boats crept in like tired people, through the sudden calm, to anchor for the night. The evening steamer came in from the city, and the long waves of her wake rolled upon the beach, and tossed the little boats. The sea drew a few long, deep breaths.

“The trouble with me, you see,” said Helen, “is just what I told you. I am not spiritual.”

“You are something better—you are altogether womanly!” said the young preacher quickly.

He seized his oars, and rowed in, as if they were shipwrecked. The old clam-digger was hauling his lobster-pots straight across their course. As Bayard veered to avoid him, he could be heard singing:—

The old clam-digger stopped, when he saw the lady in the boat. It was now quite dark. Bayard and Helen were the last people to land at the float. He gave her his hand in silence. She stood by, while he helped the keeper of the float up with the two boats. He coughed a little as he did so, and she said, rather sharply:—

“Tim! you should keep two men here, to do that work.”

Tim apologized, grumbling, and the two walked on up the pier together; still alone. At the door of the cottage, she asked him, rather timidly, if he would come in. But he excused himself, and hurried away.

When he found himself far from the hotel, and well on the way to his lodgings, Bayard drew the long breath of a man who is escaping danger. He experienced a kind of ecstatic terror. He thought of her—he thought of her till he could think no more, but fell into an ocean of feeling, tossing and deep. It seemed to have no soundings. He drowned himself in it with a perilous delight.

What would a lonely fate be, if a woman capable of understanding the highest, and serving it, capacious for tenderness, and yielding it, a woman warm, human, sweet, and as true as one’s belief in her, should pour the precious current of her love into a long life’s work? Why, a man would be a god! He would climb the inaccessible. He would achieve the undreamed and the unknown. He would not know where consecration ended, and where heaven began.

“He would be a freer man than I am,” thought Bayard, as he passed, between the larkspurs and the feverfew, up Mrs. Granite’s garden.

Mrs. Granite met him at the door; she held a kerosene lamp high in one hand; with the other she handed to him a soiled and crumpled bit of paper.

“A boy left it here, sir, not ten minutes ago, and he said you was to read it as soon as you came home. I don’t know the boy. I never saw him before, but it seemed to be something quite partikkelar.”

Bayard held the message to the lamp and read:—

---