to the University at Aberdeen. I'll make a
real Scot of him."
They had called him Andrew. Lawson wanted him to become a doctor. He
would marry a white woman.
"I'm not ashamed of being half native," Ethel said sullenly.
"Of course not, darling. There's nothing to be ashamed of."
With her soft cheek against his he felt incredibly weak.
"You don't know how much I love you," he said. "I'd give anything in the
world to be able to tell you what I've got in my heart."
He sought her lips.
The summer came. The highland valley was green and fragrant, and the
hills were gay with the heather. One sunny day followed another in that
sheltered spot, and the shade of the birch trees was grateful after the
glare of the high road. Ethel spoke no more of Samoa and Lawson grew
less nervous. He thought that she was resigned to her surroundings, and
he felt that his love for her was so passionate that it could leave no
room in her heart for any longing. One day the local doctor stopped him
in the street.
"I say, Lawson, your missus ought to be careful how she bathes in our
highland streams. It's not like the Pacific, you know."
Lawson was surprised, and had not the presence of mind to conceal the
fact.
"I didn't know she was bathing."
The doctor laughed.
"A good many people have seen her. It makes them talk a bit, you know,
because it seems a rum place to choose, the pool up above the bridge,
and bathing isn't allowed there, but there's no harm in that. I don't
know how she can stand the water."
Lawson knew the pool the doctor spoke of, and suddenly it occurred to
him that in a way it was just like that pool at Upolu where Ethel had
been in the habit of bathing every evening. A clear highland stream ran
down a sinuous course, rocky, splashing gaily, and then formed a deep,
smooth pool, with a little sandy beach. Trees overshadowed it thickly,
not coconut trees, but beeches, and the sun played fitfully through the
leaves on the sparkling water. It gave him a shock. With his imagination
he saw Ethel go there every day and undress on the bank and slip into
the water, cold, colder than that of the pool she loved at home, and for
a moment regain the feeling of the past. He saw her once more as the
strange, wild spirit of the stream, and it seemed to him fantastically
that the running water called her. That afternoon he went along to the
river. He made his way cautiously among the trees and the grassy path
deadened t
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