piled up in
the west?" he said, constantly directing her attention to objects above
her. But this was a harder task, for the timid eyes had been trained
from childhood to look down, and the head was habitually bent, like a
pendant flower on its stem. Melvyna had deliberately laid hands upon the
heavy veil and white band that formerly encircled the small face. "You
can not breathe in them," she said. But the Sister still wore a light
veil over the short dark hair, which would curl in little rings upon her
temples in spite of her efforts to prevent it; the cord and heavy beads
and cross encircled her slight waist, while the wide sleeves of her
nun's garb fell over her hands to the finger-tips.

"How do you suppose she would look dressed like other women?" said
Carrington one day. The two men were drifting in their small yacht,
lying at ease on the cushions, and smoking.

"Well," answered Keith slowly, "if she was well dressed--very well, I
mean, say in the French style--and if she had any spirit of her own, any
vivacity, you might, with that dark face of hers and those eyes--you
_might_ call her piquant."

"Spirit? She has not the spirit of a fly," said Carrington, knocking the
ashes out of his pipe and fumbling in an embroidered velvet pouch, one
of many offerings at his shrine, for a fresh supply of the strong
aromatic tobacco he affected, Keith meanwhile smoking nothing but the
most delicate cigarettes. "The other day I heard a wild scream; and
rushing down stairs I found her half fainting on the steps, all in a
little heap. And what do you think it was? She had been sitting there,
lost in a dream--mystic, I suppose, like St. Agnes--

Deep on the convent roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapor goes.
May my soul follow soon--

and that sort of thing."

"No," said Keith, "there is nothing mystical about the Luke maiden; she
has never even dreamed of the ideal ecstasies of deeper minds. She says
her little prayers simply, almost mechanically, so many every day, and
dwells as it were content in the lowly valleys of religion."

"Well, whatever she was doing," continued Carrington, "a great sea crab
had crawled up and taken hold of the toe of her little shoe. Grand
tableau--crab and Luke maiden! And the crab had decidedly the better of
it."

"She _is_ absurdly timid," admitted Keith.

And absurdly timid she was now, when, having crossed the stretch of sand
and