"Sure as that," I exclaimed. I put my hands round her trim waist, and, weak as I was, I lifted her up from the ground and kissed her laughing mouth. She struggled free, jumped into the boat and rowed away, with a laugh and a blown kiss to me from her finger tips. As I turned, I cast my eyes up along the wharf. A figure was standing there, motionless, as if hewn in stone. It was Mary Grant. Her hands were pressed flat against her bosom as if she were trying to stifle something that should not have been there. Her face wore a strange coldness that I had never seen in it before. I could not understand why it should be so,--unless,--unless she had misconstrued the good-bye of Rita and me. But, surely,--surely not! Slowly and laboriously, I made in her direction, but she sped away swiftly down the wharf, across the rustic bridge and into her cottage, closing the door behind her quickly. As I sat by the fireside, thinking over what possibly could have caused Mary to behave so, something spoke to me again and again, saying:-- "Go over and find out. Go over and find out." But I did not obey. My conscience felt clear of all wrong intent and I decided it would be better to wait till morning, when I would be more fit for the ordeal and Mary would have had time for second thoughts. Had I only known what the decision meant to me; the hours of mental torment, the suspense, the dread loneliness, I would have obeyed the inner voice and hastened to Mary's side that very moment, stripping all wrong ideas and wrong impressions of their deceitful garments, leaving them bare and cold and harmless. I did not know, and, for my lack of knowledge or intuition, I had to suffer the consequences. Later in the evening, a yacht put into the Bay. It carried some ladies and gentlemen who had been on a trip to Alaska and were now returning south. They called in for a few supplies, the getting of which I merely supervised. They asked and obtained permission from me to tie up at the wharf for the night. After they had returned aboard and just as I was laboriously undressing, I heard music floating across from Mary's. It was the same sweet, entrancing, will-o'-the wisp music that her touch always created. But to-night, she played the shadowy, mysterious, light and elusive Ballade No. 3 of Chopin. How well I knew the story and how sympathetically Mary followed it in her playing! till I could picture the scenes and the characters as if they were appearing before me on a cinema screen:--the palace, the forest and the beautiful lake; the knight and the strange, ethereal lady; the bewitchment; the promise; the new enchantress, the lure of the dance, the lady's flight and the knight's pursuit over the marshes and out on to the lake; the drowning of the unfaithful gallant and the mocking laugh of the triumphant siren. The music swelled and whispered, sobbed and laughed, thundered and sighed at the call of the wonderful musician who translated it.