r half a minute, during which she lay resting on
one elbow, looking down upon the cool, green flashing of the water a
hundred feet below, and again Nasmyth felt a little thrill run through
him. She was so very dainty in speech and thought and person, a woman
of the world he had once belonged to, and which it now seemed he might
enter again. Her delicately chiselled, half-averted face matched the
slight but finely moulded figure about which the thin white draperies
clung. She turned and looked at him.

"You certainly can't be serious now," she declared.

"I assure you that when I mentioned the glamour and mystery, I was
never half so serious in my life. They are, after all, very real
things."

He was, as a matter of fact, grimly serious for the moment as he
wondered at the change that had come over him. His life in the silent
Bush, the struggle with the icy river, and even Laura Waynefleet, who
had encouraged him in his work of rehabilitation, had by degrees
become no more than a dim, blurred memory. He knew that he could
recall it all, but he had no wish to make the effort, for it was more
pleasant to hear the sighing of the summer wind about the firs of
Bonavista, and wonder languidly what his companion thought.

"I haven't thanked you for taking care of me the day we were left
behind on the beach," said Violet.

Nasmyth made a sign of protest. "I don't think you are under any very
great obligation to me. As a matter of fact, my efforts on your behalf
nearly resulted in my drowning you. Besides, you see, there was really
not the slightest cause for uneasiness. Acton certainly would have
sent for us when the wind dropped."

"But it might have blown for days."

"Then," said Nasmyth, with a twinkle in his eyes, "we would have lived
on salmon and berries until it stopped. One really can live on them
for a considerable time, though they are not remarkably palatable when
one has anything else to eat; in fact, it's a thing I've done."

Salmon is not esteemed in that country, except for the purpose of
sending East in cans, and it is seldom that anybody eats it except the
Indians. There is probably no diet that more rapidly grows satiating.

"Ah," exclaimed the girl, with a shiver, "it would have been
horrible."

She was evidently not thinking of the salmon, but of the dreary,
dripping Bush, and Nasmyth looked at her with reproach in his eyes.

"I really don't think it would have been," he said. "In fact, I believe