ame."

For a moment she did not answer: still sitting, with that strange,
rapt, straining gaze, and with an unconscious, mechanical motion,
rolling the little sand pebbles down the side of the rock.

"There was one," she said, at length. "I hardly know how to tell you
about it. I believe that I cared for him, and yet I never told him so;
nor did he ever tell me that he loved or cared for me, and yet, at the
time, I thought that he did. It was some time ago--a very long time,
it often seems to me; nor do I suppose that he and I will ever meet
again. And now you know almost as much about it as I do myself," she
continued, turning more fully toward me. "Or what more can I say?
There was no pledge given on either side--no uttered words--and, of
course, it has all gone by. But now and then, when I think about it, I
feel regret; and it seems to me as though it were a different and
stronger feeling than that which I have for you. Whether I am mistaken
in my feelings, or how or what I really think, perhaps I cannot well
tell; I am only a simple girl, after all, and know so very little
about love, or what love truly is."

"Yet, Jessie dear," I pleaded, "if you look upon that old matter as
buried and gone--which, doubtless, it must be--why think longer about
it, instead of turning to the new and truer affection which now I
offer you? Believe me, you are letting your mind dwell merely upon a
dream of the past--one of those vain fancies of girlhood, which,
though for the time they may control the mind, have no real, vital
activity or force."

"It may be so," she said, in a sort of saddened, half-regretful tone.
"Indeed, it must be so; and it might be that when the influence has
passed away, I may find that I have cared for you better than I have
imagined. I know that, even now, you seem dear to me as a friend, and
that you are kind to me, making me always happy at your coming; yet,
at the same time, I think that there is something wanting in it
all--something which is not love. You see that I am very plain with
you. Better, then, to leave me; is it not so? For I cannot now give
you my heart; nor do I know whether, in the future, I can better do
so; and it is not right that I should keep you at my side, hoping or
expecting what, after all, may never come."

"Nay, I will not leave you for all that, my Jessie," I said,
impulsively. "I will still remain at your side, and trust even to the
mere chance that, at some future period,