ideas again, despite himself--comparable to one of those
wonderful widows which are the delight, while they rend to tatters the
ambitions of delvers into the mysteries of Olympian lore. This bright,
pretty, vivacious young woman had suffered till she had arrived at a
Helen's recklessness--nothing mattered!

There was a pause.

"I think you are in a fair way to become unforgetable in connection with
the Mississippi River," he suggested, with even voice.

"What do you mean?" she demanded, quickly.

"Well, I'll tell you," with the semblance of perfect frankness. "I've
been wondering which one of the Grecian goddesses you would have been
if you had lived, say, in Homer's time."

"Which one of them I resemble?" she asked, amused.

"Exactly that," he declared.

"Oh, that's such a pretty compliment," she cried. "It fits so well into
the things I've been thinking. The river grows and grows on me, and I
feel as though I grew with it! You don't know--you could never
know--you're a man--masculine! For the first time in my life I'm
free--and--and I don't--I don't care a damn!"

"But the future!" he protested, feebly.

"That's it!" she retorted. "For a river goddess there is no future. It's
all in the present for her, because she is eternal."

They had walked clear up to the southernmost tip of the sandbar point.
They could hear someone, perhaps a chorus of voices, singing on the
whiskey boat at the Upper Landing. They could see the light of the
boat's windows. There they turned and started back down the sandbar,
reaching the two boats moored side by side in the deadwater.

"Shall I help with those dishes to-night?" he asked.

"No, we'll do them in the morning," she replied without emphasis and as
a matter of course, which left him unassisted in his obvious
predicament.

"Well," he drawled, after a time, "it's about midnight. I must say a
river goddess is--is beyond my most vivid dreams. I wonder----"

"What do you wonder?"

"If you'll let me kiss you good-night now?"

"Yes," she answered.

The stars twinkled as he put his arm around her and took the kiss which
her lips gave--smiling.

"I'll help with those dishes in the morning," he said, helping her up
the gang plank of her boat. "Good-night!"

"Good-night," she answered, and entered the cabin, the dim light of her
turned-down lamp flashing across the sandbar and revealing his face for
a moment. Then the door closed between them.

He went to his skiff, ra