much more outside than in, wasn't there? But now the role is yours; you must be Bluebeard's wife—or Robinson Crusoe. Oh, you must stay on the island—this island with me, and not try to get off. There are a few little places we can explore without danger—will you be satisfied with them?"

Somehow I got the spirit of it, as at hearing some words of a strange language eloquently spoken. She was warning me off—but from what? I would find out soon enough, should the meaning need to be made more definite. It was like a game of jackstraws; if I did not play gingerly I should bring down the commonplace upon us. My situation was delicate—it almost seemed that I had arrived, in some way, inopportunely.

But she had gone on. "Did you read my books?" she asked, taking up one of them.

"I read that one—the poems. I got quite lost in them."

"Which ones?" She looked up from the book eagerly.

"The Journey, and,—" I hesitated, "—The Riders." I was watching her face earnestly.

"Oh, how right you are!" She was perfectly simple about it. There was no conceit in her. "It means, doesn't it, that we already have a language? But you must read the essays, too. Then maybe we'll have a philosophy."

"I'll explore them with pleasure." I tried to keep the appeal out of my voice. "I have such a lot of things to do before I go."

She got this quite as I intended. "Well, we'll be perfectly natural and let come what may, as it seems to be all decided for us. We won't force the game. But I'm afraid you'll never be contented. You'll leave the island first, I'm quite sure."

I protested; she shook her head slowly. I knew she was thinking very hard of something. Her smile was wistful, her eyes, always fixed on mine, were almost somber in their expression.

"Would you dare promise?"

I knew now there was something behind all this; some fear of my presence.

"Shall I?" I fenced, more to draw her on than from any doubt of her meaning or reluctance to agree with her wish.

"It's base of me—it's foolish, too, for it can really do no good. But, you see, I don't quite know you, do I?"

"And don't quite want to?" I was unkind enough to say, but only with the same motive as before. I wanted to get at the bottom of it—find out what it was she dreaded, and dared not acknowledge that she did.

She was a little hurt and said that it wasn't fair to say so, that I wasn't playing the game. I was properly contrite, and, for the moment, gave up the duel.

"Let it be a promise, then," I said.

At this, I thought she looked relieved; and that she should be so at my bare word touched me. It did cross my mind that, perceiving my adaptability to this sort of affair, she might perhaps have taken an adventitious means of heightening the romance of the situation with such innuendo; but she seemed to me to be altogether too direct for that, and too sapient, as well.

"Thank you. I may hold you to that promise. Does that seem ungracious?"

There it was. There was most definitely something which she didn't wish me to know, and which my advent jeoparded. I was truly sorry for her now, and a little embarrassed at my position. Meanwhile her eyes were steadily questioning mine, as if to make sure that I was to be trusted. I took up her last remark to relieve the tensity of her mood.

"You couldn't be ungracious, I'm sure. I should as soon suspect Leah!"

She laughed more freely. "Oh, I'm so glad you appreciate her! That says more for you than all the rest."

"The rest?" I insisted, quite ready for a compliment.

She gave it to me with her head a little on one side, and her right eyebrow, the irregular one, whimsically upraised.

"Yes. Your keeping it up so well, you know."

"Oh, I'll keep it up! It's the chief charm of being here, flat on my back, in a strange place. I'm sure it will be most amusing."

"I'm not so sure. I'm full of moods and whims—you're going to be terribly disappointed in me sometimes—though that sounds like vanity—and I may take advantage of your complaisance, of your promise, that is. I hope you won't regret it."

So it rested, my promise not to be too inquisitive (for I took its meaning to be that), given and accepted. It quite whetted my appetite, you may be sure. If all this talk seems fine-spun, it is my fault in the telling of it, for in the give-and-take we perfectly understood each other. I can not, of course, give her delicate inflections, but these, with her looks and gestures, said as much as her words.

But if this equivocal conversation was vague and shadowy, she could pass into the sunshine as deftly. She seemed to do so now, as she rose and went to the open window and whistled. A chorus of barks answered her. She turned to me.

"I must go down to my dogs," she said. "I wish you could see them—that is, if you like collies. I have five, all thoroughbreds—they're beauties! You'll have to get acquainted with them as soon as you're able to go down-stairs."

She leaned a little out of the window and called, "Hi! Nokomis!" drawing out the vowels. A deep bark responded.

"Hiawatha!" she called next, and she was answered by a sharp, frenzied yelping. "Minnehaha!" followed—she almost sang the name, which was replied to like the others. Then Chevalier and John O'Groat greeted her in turn.

"I'm going to take them for their morning run," she said, as she left me. "I'll examine you on the essays when I come back."

She went down, and soon after I heard her talking, evidently to Uncle Jerdon and to King. Then the barking rose ecstatically, receded in the distance, and finally was lost. I took up the essays and read for a while. My head was much better, and my soreness was slowly disappearing, but the constrained positions I had to hold to keep my rib from paining me made me too weary and impatient to put my mind on my book. I could hardly wait for Miss Fielding to return, and lay inert, watching the flies drift lazily through the sunshine that filled the room, hoping that Leah, at least, might come in to break my ennui. I welcomed even the hoarse, squeaky cry of King's pump, the occasional crowing of a rooster, the twittering of birds in the apple-tree, and the many little homely sounds of country life. The fragrant perfume of the roses in the room was a blessed reminder of Miss Fielding's kindness.

In a half-hour, I heard the dogs approaching, and she came into the room again, hatless, bringing a new breath of June with her. Her hair was blown to a silky veil through which her eyes shone and her rosy cheeks glowed as she smiled at me over the footboard of my bed. Throwing off her little white bolero, a saucy thing with black velvet collar and cuffs, she went to the mirror and gathered up the loose strands of hair, tucking them in, here and there, with deft touches of her fingers, and adjusting them with dark tortoise-shell pins, until her little head, coiffed high, was as smooth as a cat's.