It was a perfect evening. The water lay like rosy glass under the sinking sun. Not a breath of air was stirring, and even on the beach the ripple did not break, merely whispered itself away in foam. The canoe moved easily, when it did move, under a practised stroke, but much of the time it lay at ease, rocking a little now and then as a swell rose and melted under it. Vesta lay among her pillows at one end, and Geoffrey faced her. Her face was turned toward the west, and he wondered whether it was only the sunset glow that touched it, or whether the faint rosy flush belonged there. Certainly the waxen hue was gone; certainly the girl was wonderfully better. But he did not look at her much, because it got into his breathing somehow. He had not been paddling for a year, and he was "soft," of course; nothing surprising in that.

He was telling her about some of his patients. The thing that did surprise him was the interest she seemed to take; active, intelligent interest. Being sick herself, perhaps, gave her a natural sympathy; and she certainly had extraordinary intelligence, even insight. Singular thing for a girl to have!

"But what became of the poor little fellow? did he live? better not, I am sure. I hope he did not."

"Yes; almost a pity, but he did live. Got well, too, after a fashion, but he'll never be able to do anything."

The girl was silent. Presently—"I wonder whether it is worth while to get well after a fashion!" she said. "I wonder if it's worth while to go on living and never be able to do anything. I suppose I shall find out."

"You!" said the young doctor. "You will be entirely well in a year,
Miss Blyth; I'd be willing to wager it."

Vesta shook her head.

"No!" she said. "The spring is broken. There is nothing real the matter with me, I know that well enough. It's nothing but nerves—and heart, and mind; nothing but the whole of my life broken and thrown aside."

She spoke bitterly, and Geoffrey felt a pang of compassion. She was so young, and so pretty—beautiful was the word, rather. It seemed too cruel. If only she would not say anything more about it! How could she? was it because he was a physician? He would go and be a costermonger if that—

"You see," she went on, slowly; "I cared so tremendously. I had thought of nothing else for years, dreamed of nothing else. All there was of me went into it. And then, then—when this came; when he told me—I—it was pretty hard."

The quiver in her voice was controlled instantly, but it was almost worse than the sobs. Geoffrey broke out, fiercely:

"I don't know whether this man is more a beast or a devil; but I know that he is not fit to live, and I wish I—"

Vesta looked up at him in surprise. His face was crimson; his angry eyes looked beyond her, above her, anywhere except at her.

"I don't know what you mean!" she said. "He was neither. He was kind, oh, very kind. He did it as tenderly as possible. I shall always be grateful—" the quiver came again, and she stopped.

"Oh!" cried Geoffrey. He drove his paddle savagely into the water, and the canoe leaped forward. What were women made of? why, why must he be subjected to this?

The silence that followed was almost worse than the speech. Finally he stole a glance at his companion, and saw her face still faintly rosy—it must be mostly the light—and set in a sadness that had no touch of resentment in it.

"Perhaps you don't like my talking about it," she said, after awhile.

Geoffrey uttered an inarticulate murmur, but found no words.

"The aunties don't. Aunt Phoebe gets angry, and Aunt Vesta tearful and embarrassed. But—well, I could not stay at home. Everything there reminded me—I thought if I came here, where no such ideas ever entered, I might begin—not to forget, but to resign myself a little, after a time. But—I found you here. No, let me speak!" She raised her hand, as Geoffrey tried to interrupt.

"I have to make you understand—if I can—why I was rude and odious and ungrateful when I first came, for I was all those things, and I am not naturally so, I truly don't think I am. But, don't you see?—to come right upon some one who was having all that I had lost, enjoying all I had hoped to enjoy, and caring—well, perhaps as much as I cared, but still in a different way, a man's way, taking it all as a matter of course, where I would have taken it on my knees—"

"You must let me speak now, Miss Blyth," said Geoffrey Strong. He spoke loud and quickly, to drown the noise in his ears.

"I cannot let you—go on—under such a total misapprehension. I could not in a lifetime say how sorry I am for your cruel trouble. It makes me rage; I'd like to—never mind that now! but you are wholly mistaken in thinking that anything of the kind has ever come into my own life. I don't know how you received the impression, but you must believe me when I say I have never had any—any such affair, nor the shadow of one. It isn't my line. I not only never have had, but probably never shall have—" he was hurrying out word upon word, hoping to get it over and done with once and for ever. But letting his eyes drop for an instant to the girl's face, he saw on it a look of such unutterable amazement that he stopped short in his headlong speech.

They gazed at each other from alien worlds. At length—"Doctor Strong," said Vesta, and the words dropped slowly, one by one, "what do you mean?"

Geoffrey was silent. If she did not know what he meant, he certainly did not.

"What do you mean?" she repeated. "I do not understand one word of what you are saying."

Geoffrey tried hard to keep his temper. "You were speaking of your—disappointment," he said, stiffly. "You seemed to take it for granted that I—was engaged in some affair of a similar nature, and I felt bound to undeceive you. I have never been what is called in love in my life."

The bewilderment lingered in Vesta's eyes for an instant; then a light came into them. The sunset rushed in one crimson wave over face and neck and brow; she fell back on her pillows, quivering from head to foot. Was she going to cry again?

She was laughing! silently at first, trying hard to control herself; but now her laughter broke forth in spite of her, and peal after peal rang out, wild and sweet, helpless in its intensity.

Geoffrey sat paralysed a moment; then the professional instinct awoke.
"Hysteria! another manifestation, that is all. I must stop it."

He leaned forward.

"Miss Blyth!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the girl. "Oh, dear, oh, dear! what shall I do? ha, ha, ha, ha! oh, what shall I do?"

"Stop!" said Geoffrey Strong. "Do you hear me? stop!"

"Oh, yes, I hear you—but—it is so funny! oh, it is so funny! ha, ha, ha! what shall I do?"

"What shall I do?" said Geoffrey to himself. "She'll have the canoe over in another minute." He crept toward the girl, and seized her wrists in a firm grip.

"Be still!" he said. "I shall hold you until you are quiet. Be—still! no more! be still!"

"You—hurt me!" whispered the girl. The wild laughter had died away, but she was still shaking, and the tears were running down her cheeks.

"I mean to hurt you. I shall hurt you more, if you are not quiet. As soon as you are quiet I will let you go. Be—still—still—there!"

He loosed her hands, and took up the paddle again. This kind of thing was very exhausting; he was quivering himself, quite perceptibly. Now why? nerves of sympathy?

He paddled on in silence; the sun went down, and the afterglow spread and brightened along the sky. He hardly thought of his companion, his whole mind bent on suppressing the turmoil that was going on in himself.

He started at the sound of her voice; it was faint, but perfectly controlled.

"Doctor Strong!"

"Miss Blyth!"

"You—thought—I had had a disappointment in love?"

"I did!"

"You are mistaken. You misunderstood my aunt, or me, or both. I have never, any more than you—"

Her voice grew stronger, and she sat upright.

"It was so very funny—no, I am not going off again—but I think there was some excuse for me this time. You certainly are having every opportunity of studying my case, Doctor Strong. The truth is—oh, I supposed it had been made clear to you; how could I suppose anything else? It was my career, my life, that I had to give up, not—not a man. You say you have never been what is called in love; Doctor Strong, no more have I!"

There was silence, and now it was in Geoffrey's face that the tide rose. Such a burning tide it was, he fancied he heard the blood hiss as it curled round the roots of his hair. He noted this as curious, and remembered that in hanging or drowning it was the trifles that stamped themselves upon the mind. Also, it appeared that he was hollow, with nothing but emptiness where should have been his vital parts.

"Shall I say anything?" he asked, presently. "There isn't anything to say, is there, except to beg your pardon? would you like to hear that I am a fool? But you know that already. Your aunt—things were said that were curiously misleading—not that that is any excuse—Do you want me to go into detail, or may I drown myself quietly?"

"Oh! don't," said Vesta, smiling. "I could not possibly paddle myself home, and I should infallibly upset the canoe in trying to rescue you."

"You would not try!" said Geoffrey, gloomily. "It would not be human if you tried."

"It would be professional," said Vesta. "Come, Doctor Strong, you see I can laugh about it, and you must laugh, too. Let us shake hands, and agree to forget all about it."

Geoffrey shook hands, and said she was very magnanimous; but he still felt hollow. The only further remark that his seething brain presented was a scrap of ancient doggerel:

"I wish I was dead,
Or down at Owl's Head,
Or anywhere else but here!"

This was manifestly inappropriate, so he kept silence, and paddled on doggedly.

"And aren't you going to ask what my disappointment really was?" inquired Vesta, presently. "But perhaps you have guessed?"

No, Geoffrey had not guessed.

"Don't you want to know? I should really—it would be a comfort to me to talk it over with you, if you don't mind."

Geoffrey would be delighted to hear anything that she chose to tell him.

"Yes, you seem delighted. Well—you see, you have not understood, not understood in the very least; and now in a moment you are going to know all about it." She paused for a moment, and there was an appeal in her clear, direct gaze; but Geoffrey did not want to be appealed to.

"I was at Johns Hopkins," said Vesta. "It was the beginning of my second year; I broke down, and had to give it up. I was studying medicine myself, Doctor Strong."

"Oh!" cried Geoffrey Strong.

The exclamation was a singular one; a long cry of amazement and reprobation. Every fibre of the man stiffened, and he sat rigid, a statue of Disapproval.

"I beg your pardon!" he said, after a moment. "I said it before, but I don't know that there is anything else to say. No doubt I was very stupid, yet I hardly know how I could have supposed just this to be the truth. I—no! I beg your pardon. That is all."

The girl looked keenly at him. "You are not sorry for me any more, are you?" she said.

Geoffrey was silent.

"You were sorry, very sorry!" she went on. "So long as you thought I had lost that precious possession, a lover; had lost the divine privilege of—what is the kind of thing they say? merging my life in another's, becoming the meek and gentle helpmeet of my God-given lord and master—you were very sorry. I could not make it out; it was so unlike what I expected from you. It was so human, so kind, so—yes, so womanlike. But the moment you find it is not a man, but only the aspiration of a lifetime, the same aspiration that in you is right and fitting and beautiful—you—you sit there like a—lamp-post—and disapprove of me."

"I am sorry!" said Geoffrey. He was trying hard to be reasonable, and said to himself that he would not be irritated, come what might. "I cannot approve of women studying medicine, but I am sorry for you, Miss Blyth."

Her face, which had been bitter enough in its set and scornful beauty, suddenly melted into a bewildering softness of light and laughter. She leaned forward. "But it was funny!" she said. "It was very, very funny, Doctor Strong, you must admit that. You were so compassionate, so kind, thinking me—"

"Do you think perhaps—but never mind! you certainly have the right to say whatever you choose," said Geoffrey, holding himself carefully.

"And all the time," she went on, "I utterly unconscious, and only fretting because I could not have my own life, my own will, my own way!"

"By Jove!" said Geoffrey, starting. "That—that's what I say myself!"

"Really!" said Vesta, dryly. "You see I also am human, after all"

"Do you see little Vesta anywhere, sister?" asked Miss Phoebe Blyth.

Miss Vesta had just lighted her lamp, and was standing with folded hands, in her usual peaceful attitude of content, gazing out upon the sunset sea. A black line lay out there on the rosy gold of the water; she had been watching it, watching the rhythmic flash of the paddle, and thinking happy, gentle thoughts, such as old ladies of tender heart often think. Miss Phoebe had no part in these thoughts, and Miss Vesta looked hurriedly round at the sound of her crisp utterance. Her breath fluttered a little, but she did not speak. Miss Phoebe came up behind her and peered out of the window. "I don't see where the child can be," she said, rather querulously. "I thought she was in the garden, but I don't—do you see her anywhere, Vesta?"

Miss Vesta had never read the "Pickwick Papers;" she considered Dickens vulgar; but her conduct at this moment resembled that of Samuel Weller on a certain noted occasion. Raising her eyes to the twilight sky, Miss Vesta said, gently, "No, Sister Phoebe, I do not!"