er go and do what
_they_ please."

"And you think that right? You see nothing wrong in it?"

"Oh, right, wrong--I think it's right to be happy, as right as possibly
can be; and wrong to be unhappy, as wrong as possibly can be; I think
unhappy people do a great deal of harm in the world, besides being so
very tiresome! I was a goose to be as unhappy as I was last winter; I
might have known that I should either get over caring for him, or else
that I should see him again. In this case both happened."

After this declaration of principles the girl walked down the slope and
out to the edge of the platform, where she stood in the moonlight
looking northward up the lagoon.

"I can just make out his sail," she said, calling back to Margaret,
excitedly, and evidently having entirely forgotten her reasoning mood of
the moment before. "The fog is rising. Come quick and look."

But Margaret did not come. When the sail finally disappeared, Garda came
back, bright and happy. Then, as she saw her friend's face, her own face
changed to sudden sympathy.

"Margaret," she said, taking her hands, "I cannot bear to see you so
distressed."

"How can I help it?" murmured Margaret. She looked exhausted.

"You wouldn't care about all this as you do--care so deeply, I mean--if
it were not for Evert," Garda went on; "it's that that hurts you so.
Don't care so much about Evert; throw him over, as I have done."

"It's true that I care about Evert--about his happiness," answered
Margaret, in the same lifeless tone; "I have missed happiness myself, I
don't want him to miss it." Here she raised her eyes, she looked at
Garda for a long moment in silence.

The girl smiled under this inspection; she leaned forward, and put her
soft cheek against Margaret's, and her arm round Margaret's shoulders
with a caressing touch.

A revulsion of feeling swept over the elder woman, she took the girl's
face in both her hands, and looked at it.

"Promise me to say nothing to Evert, not one word--I mean about this
renewal of fancy you have for Lucian," she said, quickly.

"You call it fancy--"

"Never mind what I call it. Promise."

"Why, that's as you choose, I left it to you," Garda answered.

"I choose, then, that you say nothing. You're not really in earnest, you
don't know what you're talking about. It's a girl's foolishness; you
will come to your senses in time."

"Is that the way you arrange it? Any way you like. Perhaps you really do
know