e awakened some quick responsive thrill in her nature, for she
suddenly said, with an earnestness that was not at all assumed:

"Sometimes I have thought of that--it is so strange to hear my own
doubts repeated. If I could choose my own life--yes, I would rather live
that out than merely imagining the experiences of others. But what is
one to do? You look around, and take the world as it is. Can anything be
more trivial and disappointing? When you are Juliet in the balcony, or
Rosalind in the forest, then you have some better feeling with you, if
it is only for an hour or so."

"Yes," said he; "and you go on indulging in those doses of fictitious
sentiment until--But I am afraid the night air is too cold for you.
Shall we go back?"

She could not fail to notice the trace of bitterness, and subsequent
coldness, with which he spoke. She knew that he must have been thinking
deeply over this matter, and that it was no ordinary thing that caused
him to speak with so much feeling. But, of course, when he proposed that
they should return to the marquee, she consented. He could not expect
her to stand there and defend her whole manner of life. Much less could
he expect her to give up her profession merely because he had exercised
his wits in getting up some fantastic theory about it. And she began to
think that he had no right to talk to her in this bitter fashion.

When they had got half way back to the tent, he paused for a moment.

"I am going to ask a favor of you," he said, in a low voice. "I have
spent a pleasant time in England, and I cannot tell you how grateful I
am to you for letting me become one of your friends. To-morrow morning I
am going back home. I should like you to give me that flower--as some
little token of remembrance."

The small fingers did not tremble at all as she took the flower from her
dress. She presented it to him with a charming smile and without a word.
What was the giving of a flower? There was a cart-load of roses in the
tent.

But this flower she had worn next her heart.

CHAPTER XII.

WHITE HEATHER.

And now behold! the red flag flying from the summit of Castle Dare--a
spot of brilliant color in this world of whirling mist and flashing
sunlight. For there is half a gale blowing in from the Atlantic, and
gusty clouds come sweeping over the islands, so that now the Dutchman,
and now Fladda, and now Ulva disappears from sight, and then emerges
into the sunlight again, drippi