onlight crept around
the boat and drove away the shadow. Then he got up and went slowly
down to the water's edge with Joan's rose, all wet with his
unaccustomed tears, in his hands. Slowly and reverently he plucked off
the petals and scattered them on the ripples, where they drifted
lightly off like fairy shallops on moonshine. When the last one had
fluttered from his fingers, he went back to the house and hunted up
Captain Alec Matheson, who was smoking his pipe in a corner of the
verandah and watching the young folks dancing through the open door.
The two men talked together for some time.

When the dance broke up and the guests straggled homeward, Paul sought
Joan. Rob Shelley had his own girl to see home and relinquished the
guardianship of his sister with a scowl. Paul strode out of the
kitchen and down the steps at the side of Joan, smiling with his usual
daredeviltry. He whistled noisily all the way up the lane.

"Great little dance," he said. "My last in Prospect for a spell, I
guess."

"Why?" asked Joan wonderingly.

"Oh, I'm going to take a run down to South America in Matheson's
schooner. Lord knows when I'll come back. This old place has got too
deadly dull to suit me. I'm going to look for something livelier."

Joan's lips turned ashen under the fringes of her white fascinator.
She trembled violently and put one of her small brown hands up to her
throat. "You--you are not coming back?" she said faintly.

"Not likely. I'm pretty well tired of Prospect and I haven't got
anything to hold me here. Things'll be livelier down south."

Joan said nothing more. They walked along the spruce-fringed roads
where the moonbeams laughed down through the thick, softly swaying
boughs. Paul whistled one rollicking tune after another. The girl bit
her lips and clenched her hands. He cared nothing for her--he had been
making a mock of her as of others. Hurt pride and wounded love fought
each other in her soul. Pride conquered. She would not let him, or
anyone, see that she cared. She would _not_ care!

At her gate Paul held out his hand.

"Well, good-bye, Joan. I'm sailing tomorrow so I won't see you
again--not for years likely. You will be some sober old married woman
when I come back to Prospect, if I ever do."

"Good-bye," said Joan steadily. She gave him her cold hand and looked
calmly into his face without quailing. She had loved him with all her
heart, but now a fatal scorn of him was already mingling with he