In the silence that followed Sylvia could see the patient lines in her companion's forehead, and the shining of his deep eyes. "Except you," she added contritely, clasping her hands around his shabby coat sleeve, "I have you, but it kills me to cling to you like a drowning man, while that girl smiles at you from the top of the wave,--and owns everybody and everything!" "Edna does some very good thinking," was the quiet response. "Her temptations are different from yours, and she has struggled with them." "What has _she_ to bear?" "Sickness,--not her own, but that of dear ones, and an overdose of wealth." "Oh!" The exclamation was scornful and skeptical. "You remember the tale where the members of a community by common agreement met in the city's public square, and each one laid down his burden, and taking up some one else's went home with it? The story runs that on the following day every man and woman returned to discard the new burden and take up his own again. Supposing Edna took yours"-- Sylvia broke in: "She would be a girl who is a stranger in a strange land with no rights anywhere; whose nearest ones cast her off; who has no future, no money, no home, no plans. A girl who doesn't know how to clear a table or wash a dish in her cousin's house, while a strange girl comes in and takes charge of everything. I didn't even know how to kiss you!" Thinkright smiled. "Edna," he said, "began that when she was twelve years old. It was the year I first came here, and I let her ride on the hay-wagon and gave her the sort of good times she had never known in her life. Her father is a chronic invalid. The doctors recommended the sea, and quiet, and great simplicity of life, so they built Anemone Cottage. Mrs. Derwent is a woman devoted to the world and fashion, but she made heroic efforts to endure Hawk Island for her husband's sake during several seasons. But there wasn't any right thinking done in that cottage except what Edna did, a child as happy there as a bird let loose from a cage; and after a while they gave it up. Edna continues to come, every season they'll let her, and I can assure you, little one, she needs the refreshment. She needs it. Brave, beautiful Edna!" The peroration was uttered as an audible soliloquy, and it caused the listener to pull her hand from the calloused palm where it had been clinging. "Good-night," she said abruptly, and started to rise. Thinkright seized her arm gently and drew her back beside him. "Just a moment," he said quietly. "You said a minute ago that you had me; as if I counted for something." "What's the use, when your interest is all wrapped up in that girl?" "Oh, you poor little thing, you poor little thing!" he murmured. His thoughtful tone made Sylvia hot. "And every word I say you despise me more," she flashed forth. "You know you're sorry you came to Boston to get me. I can't be any different; I'm just myself."