m to find how much he wanted to, but he
finally concluded that he would not. They were not adherents of his
church and he did not believe that even a minister had any right to
force himself upon people who plainly wished to be let alone.

When he got home, although it was late, he went to his study and began
work on a new text--for Elder Trewin's seemed utterly out of the
question. Even with the new one he did not get on very well. At last
in exasperation he leaned back in his chair.

Why can't I stop thinking of those Four Winds people? Here, let me put
these haunting thoughts into words and see if that will lay them. That
girl had a beautiful face but a cold one. Would I like to see it
lighted up with the warmth of her soul set free? Yes, frankly, I would.
She looked upon me with indifference. Would I like to see her welcome
me as a friend? I have a conviction that I would, although no doubt
everybody in my congregation would look upon her as a most unsuitable
friend for me. Do I believe that she is wild, unwomanly, heathenish, as
Mrs. Danby says? No, I do not, most emphatically. I believe she is a
lady in the truest sense of that much abused word, though she is
doubtless unconventional. Having said all this, I do not see what more
there is to be said. And--I--am--going--to--write--this--sermon.

Alan wrote it, putting all thought of Lynde Oliver sternly out of his
mind for the time being. He had no notion of falling in love with her.
He knew nothing of love and imagined that it counted for nothing in
his life. He admitted that his curiosity was aflame about the girl,
but it never occurred to him that she meant or could mean anything to
him but an attractive enigma which once solved would lose its
attraction. The young women he knew in Rexton, whose simple, pleasant
friendship he valued, had the placid, domestic charm of their own
sweet-breathed, windless orchards. Lynde Oliver had the fascination of
the lake shore--wild, remote, untamed--the lure of the wilderness and
the primitive. There was nothing more personal in his thought of her,
and yet when he recalled Isabel King's sneer he felt an almost
personal resentment.

* * * * *

During the following fortnight Alan made many trips to the shore--and
he always went by the branch road to the Four Winds point. He did not
attempt to conceal from himself that he hoped to meet Lynde Oliver
again. In this he was unsuccessful. Sometimes he