"Yet you are rowing in the hot sun! Now, I do not see how you can be comfortable at all, and I do not believe, since you feel so well now, that you needed any assistance whatever in getting up the hill. You deceived me. Neither my grandfather nor Captain Barry ever do that," she continued, gravely, at the same time looking reprovingly at him. She leaned back in the boat, as if the matter was decided. "I wanted to speak to you about it before, but there was always some one around." "Miss Emily, let me explain," he exclaimed, filled with shame, surprised, yet pleased, to think she should take so trifling a matter so seriously. "You see," he added, half in jest and half in earnest, "after saving my life so gallantly the other night, I had rather a feeling of--er--dependence upon you, you know, the next morning, and it seemed natural and appropriate to ask you to help me up the hill. I could have gone up myself I--I suppose----" "I am glad you are honest now, at any rate. I must say you seemed to acquire the feeling very lightly." "Of honesty? Thank you!" "I mean of dependence." "I didn't. I never had it before. You see, it's dangerous to save a life. The one who is saved always feels that he belongs to the one who saves. Now, I----" "How do you know so much about it?" she broke in, with instinctive promptness. She would like to have him complete his sentence, and yet, like all women, she tried to put it off; hence her interruption. "Did you ever save any one's life?" "Yes, once," he replied, rather reluctantly, inwardly perturbed at the turn the conversation was taking. "Oh, how was it?" she questioned, interestedly, dropping her tone of banter instantly. "Was it a fellow-officer?" "No." "A sailor, then?" anxiously. "No; a young lady," desperately. "Oh, a young lady!" she exclaimed in dismay, with a note of disappointment in her voice that she endeavored in vain to suppress, and which he was very glad indeed to recognize. "Yes; one summer at Cape May. She got beyond her depth in the surf, and I swam out and brought her ashore without any great difficulty. Not a very romantic story, is it? Not half as much as--I mean, not at all----" "Oh, I think it very romantic indeed," answered this child of nature, whose notions of romance and love and other things were drawn from the antique novels of her grandfather's library; "if I had saved any one's life I should----" She stopped and blushed furiously as the natural answer to her impetuous remark sprang into her mind. "I will finish for you," interrupted Revere, eagerly, his resolution of reticence recorded in his determination of the previous night growing decidedly faint in the face of the fascination she exercised over him. "I----"