ich had quickly sent them out into the stream, beyond the course of
a larger craft which was coming toward the wharf. She wished presently
that she had chosen to row, because they would not then be face to
face; but, strange to say, since this new experience had come to her,
she had not felt so sure of herself as now, and the fear of finding
herself too weak to oppose the new tendency of her life had lessened
since her first recognition of it the night before. But Nan had fought
a hard fight, and had grown a great deal older in those hours of the
day and night. She believed that time would make her even more certain
that she had done right than she could be now in the heat of the
battle, but she wished whatever George Gerry meant to say to her might
be soon over with.

They went slowly up the river, which was now quite familiar to the
girl who had come to it a stranger only a few weeks before. She liked
out-of-door life so well that this countryside of Dunport was already
more dear to her than to many who had seen it bloom and fade every
year since they could remember. At one moment it seemed but yesterday
that she had come to the old town, and at the next she felt as if she
had spent half a lifetime there, and as if Oldfields might have
changed unbearably since she came away.

Sometimes the young oarsman kept in the middle of the great stream,
and sometimes it seemed pleasanter to be near the shore. The midsummer
flowers were coming into blossom, and the grass and trees had long
since lost the brilliance of their greenness, and wore a look of
maturity and completion, as if they had already finished their growth.
There was a beautiful softness and harmony of color, a repose that one
never sees in a spring landscape. The tide was in, the sun was almost
down, and a great, cloudless, infinite sky arched itself from horizon
to horizon. It had sent all its brilliance to shine backward from the
sun,--the glowing sphere from which a single dazzling ray came across
the fields and the water to the boat. In a moment more it was gone,
and a shadow quickly fell like that of a tropical twilight; but the
west grew golden, and one light cloud, like a floating red feather,
faded away upward into the sky. A later bright glow touched some high
hills in the east, then they grew purple and gray, and so the evening
came that way slowly, and the ripple of the water plashed and sobbed
against the boat's side; and presently in the midst of th