her what he never could
permit himself to tell her face to face. Every evening he wrote thus
to her, and the hour so spent glorified the entire day. The rest of
the hours--all the other hours of the commonplace day--he was merely a
poor schoolmaster with a long struggle before him, one who might not
lift his eyes to gaze on a star. But at this hour he was her equal,
meeting her soul to soul, telling out as a man might all his great
love for her, and wearing the jewel of it on his brow. What wonder
indeed that the precious hour which made him a king, crowned with a
mighty and unselfish passion, was above all things sacred to him? And
doubly sacred when, as tonight, it followed upon an hour spent with
her? Its mingled delight and pain were almost more than he could bear.

He went through the kitchen and the hall and up the narrow staircase
with a glory in his eyes that thus were held from seeing his sordid
surroundings. Link Houseman, sprawled out on the platform before the
kitchen door, saw him pass with that rapt face, and chuckled. Link was
ill enough to look at any time, with his sharp, freckled features and
foxy eyes. When he chuckled his face was that of an unholy imp.

But the schoolmaster took no heed of him. Neither did he heed the girl
whom he met in the hall. Her handsome, sullen face flushed crimson
under the sting of his utter disregard, and her black eyes followed
him up the stairs with a look that was not good to see.

"Sis," whispered Link piercingly, "come out here! I've got a joke to
tell you, something about the master and his girl. You ain't to let on
to him you know, though. I found it out last night when he was off to
the shore. That old key of Uncle Jim's was just the thing. He's a
softy, and no mistake."

* * * * *

Upstairs in his little room, the schoolmaster was writing his letter.
The room was as bare and graceless as all the other rooms of the
farmhouse where he had boarded during his term of teaching; but it
looked out on the sea, and was hung with such priceless tapestry of
his iris dreams and visions that it was to him an apartment in a royal
palace. From it he gazed afar on bays that were like great cups of
sapphire brimming over with ruby wine for gods to drain, on headlands
that were like amethyst, on wide sweeps of sea that were blue and far
and mysterious; and ever the moan and call of the ocean's heart came
up to his heart as of one great, hopeless