Ellery flushed with traitorous rejoicing that Dick was absent. It was a day of sunshine--not the ardent blaze of summer, but the crisp glow of October that seems all light with little heat. The lake was so pale as to be hardly blue, and girdled with soft yellow, touched only here and there with the intenser red of the rock maples. Back farther from shore rose the tawny bronze of oaks. The light breeze flung the _Swallow_ along with those caressing wave-slaps that are the sleepiest of sounds. To sail under that sky, with Madeline leaning on her elbow near at hand, they two separated from the rest of the world by wide waters, was like a brief experience of Paradise. Ellery watched the light tendril of hair that touched her cheek, lifted itself and touched again, near that lovely curve above her ear. The cheek was warm and creamy but untouched by deeper color. He fell into that mood of blessed silence that, as a rule, comes only when one is solitary. As they rounded at the dock he came back to himself with a sudden wonder if she had missed the titillation of Dick's chatter, for she had been as silent as he. "I'm afraid I have been very dull. I enjoyed myself so much that I forgot to try to amuse you." "It's been a heavenly sail, exactly to match the day," Madeline answered with a deep contented sigh that filled him with delight. "I was this moment thinking what a comfort it was to know you well enough so that I didn't have to talk. It's a test of comradeship, isn't it?" As they smiled at each other, his heart leaped with the consciousness of a bond below the surface. He treasured this crumb of her kindness, not because she was niggardly, but because there was little that belonged to him and to him alone. Sometimes, in the rush and roar of the office, came the memory of her eyes and her voice of assurance. "What will our comradeship be like, when--when she is Dick's wife?" he questioned himself, and then fell to work with fury. Thus the delightful summer died into the past; there came a winter only less good, with its dinners and dances, with quiet fireside evenings, and yet another summer of the same close friendship that began to take on the semblance of a permanent thing in life, all the richer as experience grew deeper and knowledge wider and the best things dearer. Whether they read or sang or discussed, though the world saw little done, these three young people had the inestimable happiness of knowing one another. CHAPTER VI JEWEL WEED