o, which make it sing!

MARY.

When Mary Ballard came on deck on the morning after the storm,
everybody stared. Where was the girl of yesterday--the frail white
girl who had moped so listlessly in her chair, scribbling on little
bits of paper? Here was a fair young beauty, with her head up, a clear
light shining in her gray eyes--a faint flush on her cheeks.

Colin Quale, meeting her, flickered his lashes and smiled: "Is this
what the storm did to you?"

"What?"

"This and this." He touched his cheeks and his eyes. "To-day, if I
painted you, I should have to put pink on my palette--yesterday I
should have needed only black and white."

Mary smiled back at him. "Do you interpret things always through the
medium of your brush?"

"Why not? Life is just that--a little color more or less, and it all
depends on the hand of the artist."

"What a wonderful palette He has!" Her eyes swept the sea and the sky.
"This morning the world is all gold and blue."

"And yesterday it was gray."

Mary flashed a glance at him. His voice had changed. Delilah was
coming toward them. "There's material I like to work with," he said,
"there's something more than paint or canvas--living, breathing beauty."

"He's saying things about you," Mary said, as Delilah joined them.

Delilah, coloring faintly, cast down her eyes. "I'm afraid of him,
Mary," she said.

Colin laughed. "You're not afraid of any one."

"Yes, I am. You analyze my mental processes in such a weird fashion.
You are always reading me like a book."

"A most interesting book," Colin's lashes quivered, "with lovely
illustrations."

They laughed, and swept away into a brisk walk, followed by curious
eyes.

If to others Mary's radiance seemed a miracle of returning health, to
Porter Bigelow it was no miracle. Nothing could have more completely
rung the knell of his hopes than this radiance.

Her attitude toward him was irreproachable. She was kinder, indeed,
than she had been in the days when he had tried to force his claims
upon her. She seemed to be trying by her friendliness to make up for
something which she had withdrawn from him, and he knew that nothing
could ever make up.

So it came about that he spent less and less of his time with her, and
more and more with Leila--Leila who needed comforting, and who welcomed
him with such sweet and clinging dependence--Leila who hung upon his
advice, Leila who, divining his hurt, strove by her swee