But Ardea,
shrinking from a six months' guesting with any one, said no, and told
her grandfather she was ready to go home.

The start was from Havre, and Vincent, with time on his hands, was her
companion on the railway journey, her _courrier du place_ in the
embarkation, and her faithful shadow up to the instant when the warning
cry for the shore-goers rang through the ship. It was scarcely a moment
for sentimental passages, and under the most favoring conditions,
Vincent Farley was something less than sentimental. Yet he found time to
declare himself in conventional fashion, modestly asking only for the
right to hope.

Ardea was not ready to give an answer, even to the tentative question;
yet she did it--was, in a manner, surprised into doing it. For the young
woman who has not loved, it is easy to doubt the existence of the
seventh Heaven, or at least to reckon without its possibilities. At the
very crucial moment the clear-sighted inner self was assuring her that
this cold-eyed young man, who walked in the paths of righteousness
because he found them easier and pleasanter than the way of the
transgressor, was at best only a mildly exciting apotheosis of the
negative virtues. But the negative virtues, failing to score
brilliantly, nevertheless have the advantage of continuous innings.
Ardea was turned twenty in the year of the European holiday, and she
had--or believed she had--her heritage of the Dabney impetuosity well in
hand. Vincent's self-restraint was admirable, and his gentle deference,
conventional as it was, rose almost to the height of sentiment. So she
gave him his answer; gave him her hand at parting, and stood dutifully
fluttering her handkerchief for him while the liner drew out of its slip
and pointed its prow toward the headlands.

With rough weather on the homeward passage, she had space and
opportunity to consider the consequences. Being the only good sailor in
the trio, she had her own self-communings for company during the greater
part of the six days, and the incident sentimental took on an aspect of
finality which was rather dismaying. It was quite in vain that she
sought comfort in the reflection that she was committed to nothing
conclusive. Vincent Farley had not taken that view of it. True, he had
asked for nothing more than a favorable attitude on her part; but she
thought he would be less than a man if he had not seen his final answer
foreshadowed in her acquiescence.

The finality a