nt_--the smell of a larch wood! It
is the essence of the earth-odour, distilled in the thousand-fold
alembics of those feathery trees. And the light winds that awoke blew
murmurous music, so sharply and sweetly did that keen foliage divide
the air.

Having gazed their fill on the morning around them, they returned to
breakfast, and after breakfast they went down to the river. They stood
on the bank, over one of the deepest pools, in the bottom of which the
pebbles glimmered brown. Kate gazed into it abstracted, fascinated,
swinging her neckerchief in her hand. Something fell into the water.

"Oh!" she cried, "what shall I do? It was my mother's."

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when Alec was in the water.
Bubbles rose and broke as he vanished. Kate did not scream, but stood,
pale, with parted lips, staring into the pool. With a boiling and
heaving of the water, he rose triumphant, holding up the brooch. Kate
gave a cry and threw herself on the grass. When Alec reached her, she
lay sobbing, and would not lift her head.

"You are very unkind, Alec," she said at last, looking up. "What will
your mother say?"

And she hid her face and began to sob afresh.

"It was your mother's brooch," answered Alec.

"Yes, yes; but we could have got it out somehow."

"No other how.--I would have done that for any girl. You don't know
what I would do for _you_, Kate."

"You shouldn't have frightened me. I had been thinking how greedy the
pool looked," said Kate, rising now, as if she dared not remain longer
beside it.

"I didn't mean to frighten you, Kate. I never thought of it. I am
almost a water-rat."

"And now you'll get your death of cold. Come along."

Alec laughed. He was in no hurry to go home. But she seized his hand
and half-dragged him all the way. He had never been so happy in his
life.

Kate had cried because he had jumped into the water!

That night they had a walk in the moonlight. It was all moon--the air
with the mooncore in it; the trees confused into each other by the
sleep of her light; the bits of water, so many moons over again; the
flowers, all pale phantoms of flowers: the whole earth, transfused with
reflex light, was changed into a moon-ghost of its former self. They
were walking in the moon-world.

The silence and the dimness sank into Alec's soul, and it became silent
and dim too. The only sound was the noise of the river, quenched in
that light to the sleepy hush of moon-haunted st