Leonard answered, and then added in a lower tone, "you won't forget
your promise, Miss Fred."

"No, I will not forget; but you must try not to cherish hard feeling."

"Oh, I don't say it's his fault. Mebbe it's hers."

"Perhaps it's nobody's, and perhaps there's no harm done after
all,--at any rate, none that can't be undone."

"Yes, there is," Leonard answered gloomily. "The past can't never come
back, and things won't never be the same."

"Oh, cheer up!" Winifred answered more hopefully. "Your going away is
the best thing under the circumstances, and I'll do what I can for
you; but I wish it were anything else."

"Thank you, marm, and good-bye!" With another shy duck, Leonard let
himself down over the rocks and sculled out into the strip of rippling
moonlight which stretched across the bay.

The moonlight fell also upon Winifred Anstice's face as she stood
looking after him, and showed a pathetic little quiver about the
mouth. An instant later, she dashed the back of her hand across her
eyes, and exclaimed, half aloud, "It's too bad; I've no patience with
him."

"What a clear night it is!" said Flint, stepping out from the shadows.

Winifred started a little. "I thought you were sitting by the fire,"
she said rather abruptly.

"Indeed," Flint answered. It was one of his peculiarities never to be
drawn on to the explanations to which most people are driven by the
mere necessity of saying something. After all, he had as good a right
to the place where he was as Miss Anstice herself. Miss Anstice
perhaps was thinking the same thought, for she made no response, only
stood twisting and untwisting a bit of lawn handkerchief which bade
fair to be worn out before it reached home. At length, with the air of
one nerving herself to a difficult task, she turned about and faced
Flint. Lifting her clear gray eyes full to his, she began
hesitatingly:--

"Mr. Flint."

"Yes, Miss Anstice."

"Will you do me a favor?"

"Assuredly."

"No, not an 'assuredly' favor, but a real favor."

"If I can."

"Will you do it blindly?"

"No, I will do it with my eyes open."

"You cannot."

"Try me!"

The girl shifted her eyes from his face to the path of moon beams in
which Leonard's boat floated far off like a dark speck against the
ripples of light. When she went on, it was in a lower tone, with a
note in her voice which Flint had never heard there before,--the note
of appeal.

"I am going to ask you a very strange