Meanwhile, the two in the boat had been rowing idly over the lake. Ella lay back on the cushions of the stern with half-closed eyes, while Sylvester sculled lazily. She had been very glad to see him when he arrived the evening before, and her heart had given him a little unbidden throb of welcome. His altered attitude towards her, as well as dim gleams of revelation of some fundamental change within him, had caused her to forget, or at least look back unresentfully upon old wrongs. At times an inflection of the voice, a sudden gentleness of manner, brought his father vividly back to her. It seemed as if, by some strange metempsychosis, the old man's spirit had entered into the son, and was gradually unfolding. He was still the worthiest man she knew. She lived her old life amid the jargon of culture in her aunt's house, and it wearied her, and she longed for something nobler. In Sylvester she found at least reality. She beheld him a sane, sincere, strong man, around whose life was gathered an indeterminate pathos. The sun shone bright from a deep blue sky flecked here and there with an infinitely distant wisp of cirrus. The tiny promontories jutted out their green into the lake. Far away rose the glittering white snow-peaks, and close at hand the mass of the Righi with white specks of habitations nestling in its sides. The water plashed pleasantly against the side of the boat. Ella murmured of the loveliness around. “The day seems to have got into my heart,” she said. “If you looked into it, you would see everything as in a camera. I wish it would last.” “Why shouldn't it?” asked Sylvester, leaning on his sculls. “We are going away to-morrow.” “There is a way in which I at least could keep this in my heart for ever,” said he. “I would that could be a way for me too,” she murmured. “Why not, dear? I have waited for you.” She looked round upon the tremulous beauty of sky and lake and mountain with a wistful sense of its transience. Her heart was very womanly. “It would be a way for me, if there were not something between us, Syl,” she answered,--“something that keeps us apart. I don't know what it is.” “If I could remove it--?” he began. Their eyes met. He suddenly took to his oars and began to pull with vigorous strokes. “We are going to land,” he said. They were silent until they had reached the foot of one of the little promontories. Then, finding a convenient landing-place, he clambered out and helped her ashore. “Let us sit down, dear,” he said, when he had made fast the boat. “I have a great deal to tell you.”