pointed shoes, as if she had never known a grief or a care.

Mr. Furrey came up to say good-evening, with his most careful bow.
Lowering his voice, he said:

"There's Miss Dallas and Captain Farnham flirting in Italian."

"Are you sure they are flirting?"

"Of course they are. Just look at them!"

"If you are sure they are flirting, I don't think it is right to look
at them. Still, if you disapprove of it very much, you might speak to
them about it," she suggested, in her sweet, low, serious voice.

"Oh, that would never do for a man of my age," replied Furrey, in good
faith. He was very vain of his youth.

"What I wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued. "There is
going to be a Ree-gatta on the river the day after to-morrow, and I
hope you will grant me the favor of your company. The Wissagewissametts
are to row with the Chippagowaxems, and it will be the finest race this
year. Billy Raum, you know, is stroke of the------"

Her face was still turned to him, but she had ceased to listen. She was
lost in contemplation of what seemed to her a strange and tragic
situation. Farnham was so near that she could touch him, and yet so far
away that he was lost to her forever. No human being knew, or ever
would know, that a few days ago he had offered her his life, and she
had refused the gift. Nobody in this room was surprised that he did not
speak to her, or that she did not look at him. Nobody dreamed that he
loved her, and she would die, she resolved deliberately, before she
would let anybody know that she loved him. "For I do love him with my
whole heart," she said to herself, with speechless energy, which sent
the blood up to her temples, and left her, in another instant, as pale
as a lily.

Furrey at that moment had concluded his enticing account of the
regatta, and she had quietly declined to accompany him. He moved away,
indignant at her refusal, and puzzled by the blush which accompanied
it.

"What did that mean?" he mused. "I guess it was because I said the
crews rowed in short sleeves."

Farnham also saw the blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss
Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of Francois Coppee. He saw the
clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral
light in a starry night. He thought he had never seen anything so
lovely, but he wondered "what that oaf could have said to make her
blush like that. Can it be possible that he----" His brow knitted with