"Ridiculously little. In the novels--I read dozens of them in the winter--it is always something pathetic. A letter left in a blotting book, or a wrong initial on the envelope, or a false announcement of marriage. Something not to be foreseen or helped. Or if it isn't the fault of fate, they get brain fever and forget their own names. But we! We just quarrelled, and didn't care to make it up. It isn't in the least romantic, I'm afraid." "But we didn't forget," he said in the same argumentative tone. "At least I didn't." "Of course not. Does any one ever forget,--absolutely?" Her voice trembled slightly. The pathos of memory was not to be ignored entirely. "It seems such a pity--you and I leading such lonely lives." "Lonely? You should see my Noah's Ark." "Well! Don't scoff at me. I suppose it is absurd, but to-night somehow--" She interrupted him with a soft hand laid on his. "Don't, please don't. It is like children trying to pretend that their shadows on the wall are alive. But they are shadows; nothing but shadows, and the light which throws them--" she pointed to the window with a laugh that was half a sob. "Poor man! he ought to be extinguished by this time." "Perhaps you are right," he replied sadly, still holding her hand; "but it seems hard--the shadows were so pretty." "Not so pretty as the reality." "What is that?" "That we have met and forgiven each other--without payment." "Aunt Will," shouted Rick, bursting into the room, "there's the professor in the front hall dripping like a drowned rat. I got the men and ferried him over on the first chance; now they are waiting for Mr. Lockhart." Miss Willina was on her feet in a moment. "Take him upstairs, Rick, and put him to bed--between the blankets. I'll come directly with gruel and mustard. And, Rick! give him a good scrub--all over--with the roughest--bath towel--you can find." The last directions were called up the stairs as she went into the hall to see Will Lockhart put on his mackintosh properly. "Good-bye, Miss Macdonald. I'm not in the least envious of the professor's immediate future," he said with smiling eyes, but with vague regrets still at his heart. "I'm glad, though, he was at the other side of the stream to-night. I liked the shadows." "And the reality?" she asked quickly. He stooped and kissed the pretty little hand browned by sun and wind. "It is like the breath of your sea. The memory of it will help to blow away the cobwebs until I come back--in the summer." "The summer is over." "Not St. Martin's, and one often has a spell of fine weather late in the year when the earlier portions have been stormy." She shook her head. V "Well, Hooper, what is it?"