ed to see his treasures go from hand to hand.

'Not for present trade, I reckon?' asked Giles.

'No,' said Christian, 'my price can bide,' and he carried his prize away
with him home.

Not even Rhoda could admire and handle that coral void of offence; Lois
and Giles only. One little branch, shell-pink, took the girl's fancy; she
turned it over, frankly covetous. Christian saw by her shy eyes and
pretty, conscious smile she made sure he would presently say, 'Keep it,
cousin.' He could not. A gift, fresh from the cold white hands of the
sea-maid he loved, he could not give straightway into the ardent hold of
one who offered, he feared, to him her young love.

So sweet and dear had Rhoda grown as cousin, as sister, he hated the
suspicion that she could care for him more than he desired or deserved;
he hated himself when, loving her most, for her sake he was cold and
ungracious. Rhoda, wounded, resented the change with a touch of malice;
she allowed the advance of the handsome idler Philip, no friend of
Christian's liking, she knew, though to her his faults were not patent.
That gift withheld, on the morrow began Philip's benefit. Giles and Lois
looked on, and neither wholly condemned the girl's feminine practice.
Then what could Christian do, harassed and miserable, but return to
brotherly guardianship to keep a dear heart safe from the tampering of an
arrant trifler.

Too fatally easy was it to win her away, to keep her away. She came like
a bird to the lure, with her quick, warm response, making Christian
wretched; he gladdened a little only when he encountered Philip's scowl.

Compared with this sore trouble, but a little evil to him seemed the
sharp return of the public ban for comment on Diadyomene's gift. He was
ready to flout it as before, not heeding more ominous warnings plain in
bent thumbs, in black looks, in silences that greeted him, and in
mutterings that followed. A day came when hootings startled him out of
his obstinate indifference, when from ambush stones flew, one with bloody
effect; a later day, when a second time he had brought in too invidious
a taking.

'I sent no gift!' had declared Diadyomene, with wide, steady eyes, but
that time Christian did not believe her, though hardly with blame of the
untruth. On the morrow her second gift rose. When the boy sought her
again she disclaimed once more; and curious of his perplexity and of his
gashed face, drew from him something of his plight. Her eye