rchie so quietly to this that she scarcely
started. "The sunshine and shade are more evenly balanced than we
know. To be sure, there are some lives like that day that is neither
clear nor dark,--gray, monotonous lives, with few breaks and pleasures
in them. But perhaps even that question may be happily solved when one
looks out a little farther to the light beyond."

"Yes, if one does not grow tired of waiting for the answer," she said,
a little dreamily. "There is so much that cannot be clear here." And
then she roused with a little difficulty from her abstraction, and
looked around her. The others had all gone on: they were standing
alone on the shingly beach, just above a little strip of yellow
sand,--only they two. Was it for this reason that her eyes grew wide
and troubled, and she moved away rather hurriedly? But he still kept
close to her, talking quietly as he did so.

"Do you remember this place?" he said: "it reminds me of a picture I
once saw. I think it was 'Atalanta's Race,' only there was no Paris.
It was just such as scene as this: there was the dark breakwater, and
the long line of surf breaking on the shore, and the sun was shining
on the water; and there was a girl running with her head erect, and
she scarcely seemed to touch the ground, and she stopped just here,"
resting his hand on the black, shiny timber.

"Do not," she answered, in a low voice, "do not recall that day: it
stings me even now to remember it." And as the words "Bravo Atalanta!"
recurred to her memory, the hot blush of shame mounted to her face.

"I have no need to recall it," he returned, still more quietly, for
her discomposure was great, "for I have never forgotten it. Yes, this
is the place, not where I first saw you, but where I first began to
know you. Phillis, that knowledge is becoming everything to me now!"

"Do not," she said, again, but she could hardly bring out the words.
But how wonderful it was to hear her name pronounced like that! "The
others have gone on: we must join them."

"May I not tell you what I think about you first?" he asked, very
gently.

"Not now,--not yet," she almost whispered; and now he saw that she was
very pale, and her eyes were full of tears. "I could not bear it yet."
And then, as she moved farther away from him, he could see how great
was her agitation.

It was a proof of his love and earnestness that he suffered the girl
to leave him in this way, that he did not again rejoin her until