I remember well the occasion on which Carew first confided his hopes to me. It was an afternoon in early March. The Hermitage had been completed-and named-some five months earlier; Nathalie had been. our guest six weeks. In building his house, David had taken no thought for a woman's comfort; it was a man's den-a bachelor refuge. Besides a small wing which held the kitchen and servants' offices, there were but three rooms: a chamber of

Spartan simplicity, a dining-room, and a study the planning and furnishing of which last-named had been David's chief concern. It contained a huge fireplace in which tall andirons, of antique German design, supported the burning logs; thick rugs covered the polished floor, and the walls were lined with books. On one side a deep bay-window looked seaward, and through a vista, formed by two gnarled and overarching oaks, could be seen the flat, grey beach and the white roll of the surf, backed by a line of dark green water to which the pale blue sky bent down. Here stood David's easiest chair, and the books he loved best and read the oftenest.

It was none of his old favorites, however, that I found in his hand when I opened the study door on that blustering March day, but a rare little volume of William Morris's poems, newly issued from the Kelmscott Press. He rose to greet me, with his finger still between the leaves, and, motioning me to a chair, read aloud to me some verses entitled "Praise of My Lady," which pleased me very well-until I began to grasp his application of them. Not my sister Agnes did he have in mind with cheeks "hollowed a little

to make the pale face sad." But what was I to say to you, David, my friend!-to you whose sympathy I had always found unfailing! I could hear the faltering of his voice as the words came nearer home.

"Her great eyes, standing far apart, Draw up some memory from her heart, And gaze out very mournfully;

Beata mea Domina!

Then, with an outburst of confidence, he spoke of Nathalie as she had sung to us the night before,how, when her slim hands struck the guitar, it was as though she were plucking at his very heartstrings. And then he read:

"So beautiful and kind they are,
But most times gazing out afar,
Waiting for something, not for me.
Beata mea Domina!"
"God pity me though, if I miss'd
The telling, how along her wrist
The veins creep, dying languidly
Inside her tender palm and thin.

Beata mea Domina!"

And I listened, thanking Heaven meanwhile for what in months past I had often resented in my sister Agnes-that, with all her friendliness, she seemed to feel so little of the charm that David had for me.

Nathalie felt it, at least she felt the power of the man's personality; but whether she yielded to his stronger will or to her own heart's pleading, remains a mystery. If she engaged herself to him without loving him-and I do not say that she did she wronged herself as cruelly as she wronged him. They became engaged in the month of April, and David was like one transfigured. He no longer walked the solid earth, but dwelt in a kind of rapture, lifted high above all material things. It was a beautiful season, with days of equable tem

perature and skies transparently blue. In the narrow belt of woods that stretched the length of the island between the Big House and the Hermitage, the miracle of unfolding green was never swifter or more thrilling, and the piping song of birds mingled with the distant organ tones of the ever-rolling surf in a glad, continuous harmony. There the lovers walked together, hour after hour; but of love-making in the vulgar sense there was absolutely nothing. Carew's attitude was that of reverent worship; the cup of his happiness was so poignantly sweet that he scarcely dared to taste of it. He has told me that the mere pressure of Nathalie's little hand, as she bade him good night, threw his pulses into such wild confusion that after leaving the Big House he often walked the beach for hours.

Now it seems to me that a woman, being no angel after all but a very mortal like ourselves, may in time grow rather weary of this strained relationship. I do not say that Nathalie did, however, only that if she found her pedestal somewhat high and lonesome, she was not altogether inexcusable. Certainly I think that David neglected his opportunities. It would have been no great sacrilege if he had sometimes tasted her little rosebud of a mouth, which she always offered me so frankly after Agnes and I had exchanged our hearty morning kiss. And it would have been wisdom on his part to have speedily set about the enlarging of his house, giving Nathalie some share in the planning of it. Or so it seems to me. Instead of which, he spent those first enchanted days in a confession of faith, as it were, in which he overwhelmed the girl's timid and tender mind

with all his wild theories and beautiful mysticism. To my thinking, there was something fairly cruel in it-as though one should try to print a whole system of philosophy upon the petals of a rose! So matters went until the middle of June, when there came an unexpected interruption.

One morning, as I was riding around my little domain-for my lame knee makes me a poor pedestrian-I heard the chug-chugging of a small naphtha launch close by the island pier, and going down to investigate, I was met half way by a pleasant-faced man in a crisp suit of white duck and the uniform cap of an officer of the United States Coast Survey. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Warren, and explained the nature of his business, which would keep him in our neighborhood for several weeks. I responded, then, with some account of my own affairs, and-because there was something very frank and engaging in his manner-was perhaps rather more expansive than is my

wont.

"But what an ideal existence yours must be!" exclaimed Warren. "To be outside of the press and turmoil of business, and monarch of all you survey! What says our friend. Horace?-'Happy the man who ploughs in paternal fields with his own oxen!'"

"And is not in bondage to some Alfius of the day!" I added grimly. "Unfortunately, you see, Cotton isn't always king! But on the whole, our life is a pleasant one; and if you care to share it for a week or two-by making this your headquarters you would confer a favor on a rather lonely man."

This I meant in all sincerity, for of late I had been feeling somewhat

neglected, David's time for the nonce being devoted to solitary ecstasies and tête-à-têtes with Nathalie. I thought my sister Agnes also would welcome a fresh interest, and I could always count on her preparedness to receive an unexpected guest.

Warren accepted the invitation as cordially as it was given; so I dismounted, and together we walked toward the house. While we were crossing the front lawn, David and Nathalie appeared on the south piazza and I signaled to them gaily. The girl hung back at the sight of a stranger, but Carew descended the steps to meet us. As he and Warren shook hands, I was forcibly struck by the contrast between them. Their very glances were as different as day and night. David's wine-brown eyes grew dark with questioning, as though he would. absorb in one steady gaze all the secrets that lay behind the sunny blue eyes of the other. At the very first opportunity I asked him privately:

"What do you think of Warren?" "A happy-tempered materialist," he replied; and the justice of the estimate impresses me still.

The genial spirit of the new -comer at once infused new life into our household. Not only Agnes, but Nathalie also, responded quickly to his outspoken interest in everything pertaining to our island life; and when the fields, the barns and stables, the gin house and negro quarters had been inspected, they took him blackberrying in the woods, crabbing in the shallow. waters near the shore, and fishing for sheephead among the rocks. The sweet, June weather enticed us out at all hours; even the nights were too lovely to be spent indoors,

so Agnes made tea for us upon the beach. It was a week of pleasant holidays, and I for one saw no cloud upon the horizon. David, I thought, grew rather wearied of our strenuous amusements; but he cheerfully acquiesced in every proposition that was made, so I supposed that, like me, he was delighted to see the zest with which Nathalie enjoyed herself. She became positively merry, and developed a pretty sportiveness of which I had never thought her capable. As for my sister Agnes, she was, as usual, the bright centre around which everything revolved. I could see that Warren admired her, though to what extent I was unable to judge; for he devoted himself assiduously to both girls, walking with Agnes at one momentthe next, sitting at Nathalie's feet as she sang to her guitar. He filled his camera with photographs, and in the woods it was Nathalie who posed for him-a. slim figure in her thin, black dress, with her hands full of flowers; but on the beach, he took innumerable pictures of Agnes, with the waves foaming to her feet, the wind blowing her white gown and the sunlight glistening on her bright, uncovered hair.

The three of them had already set out, before breakfast one morning,

on

some light-hearted excursion, when David rode over from the Hermitage. He found me at home, however, and together we walked down to the beach to seek for the missing ones. I noticed, then, that he looked hollow-eyed and pale; and when I spoke of it, he admitted that he had sat up half the night over his books.

"I am afraid you begrudge yourself so many idle days,” I said.

"No," he replied; "but I had no desire for sleep." He stooped as he

spoke, picked up a shell from the beach and studied it earnestly, his face settling into graver lines. "Curious!" he muttered presently, with his eyes still fixed on the pentagonal disk in his hand. It was only a common star-fish, so I glanced at him in some surprise.

He answered my unspoken question with a singular smile that haunted me long afterward-it had so much of sadness in it; then he tossed the shell away. "I was recalling a theory," he said, "advanced by Novalis, the German mystic, which if I remember rightly-runs somewhat thus:

"Men travel in manifold paths, and whoso traces and compares these, will find strange figures come to light; figures which seem as if they belonged to that great cypherwriting which one meets with everywhere on wings of birds, in clouds, in crystals, in the snow, in forms of plants and animals, in shells. in plates of glass and pitch when touched and struck on, in the filings round the magnet, and the singular conjunctures of chance.""

"And what deep mystery did you read just now in that little starfish?" I demanded.

His brown eyes met the smile in mine without resentment. "I fancied," he said, "only fancied, of course, that I read a warning there. Have you ever given a serious thought to the probable consequences of your invitation to Warren?"

"No!" said I. "So iar, I have only congratulated myself on securing a very pleasant guest." There may have been some irritation in my voice, for David glanced at inc keenly.

"You are tired walking," he declared. "Let us sit down awhile-I

want to explain to you what it is that I foresee."

I threw myself down beside him. on the slope of a large sand-drift and tipped my hat over my face.

"I want you to look as well as listen," said Carew, and, leaning forward, he drew with the point of his cane a straight line on the smooth white beach. "See here, Boyd! This line-the extremes of which I will letter A and B-represents the bond of affection between your sister and yourself. Now, I will place my own initial C at this point here, and draw the line BC fully equal to the line AB; for I think we have been brothers in the spirit if not in actual ties of blood—” and his eye sought mine for the confirmation he knew well he would find there. "Now," he continued, "on the day when I first met your sister Agnes and was made a welcome guest in your home, this third line, CA, welded us together in a gracious triangle of friendshipwhich nevertheless is not intended to be equilateral, for I cannot pretend that the relations between Miss Boyd and myself are of the same strength and intimacy as between you and her, or you and me." Again his eyes were lifted to mine with a question in their still depths. I nodded assent, and for a moment or two we both silently contemplated the rude figure in the sand.

"That," said Carew at last, "was before Nathalie came. It was your sister who offered a home to the young orphan and, in bringing her here, changed our triangle into a quadrilateral figure, thus-" and the point of his cane moved over the sand with careful precision as he traced the lines AN and NB. Then, without a word of comment, he drew

the diagonal CN, and glanced at me significantly.

"From the first," he continued, in lowered tones, "that line was inevitable, but it is the only one so far which represents an attachment that is not perfectly reciprocal." I would have made some protest there, but his sombre eyes defied me, and I noted a sudden compression of his sensitive mouth under the soft brown beard as he went on with his drawing. "This is what happened, Boyd, when you went off on a new tack, as it were, and added a fifth to our little company!" and he tapped the completed figure with his cane.

"By the memory of Pythagoras!" I exclaimed, with assumed lightness. "We have the pentagram itself symbol of perfection and of health. What better omen could you wish for?"

"You don't really suppose I am looking for omens!" he gravely chided. "This, like all other forms in nature, has doubtless its significance as a letter in the alphabet of the hidden language that records the mysteries of the creation. But what I see in it are the lines in which the affections of five human beings are now becoming bound up and interwoven. This indicating the perimeter of the pentagon, "shows the attachments formed by mere pressure of circumstance, while these inner lines of the star represent the true heart-reachings. And do you note that there is the same affinity between Nathalie and this stranger as between Nathalie and myself?"

"Or between Warren and my sister Agnes-" I began, when I heard a clear halloo behind me and, starting up, perceived the three truants emerging from the woods.

Nathalie hurried forward in advance of the others and gave her hand to David with a little propitiatory smile.

"I knew you were looking for me," she said, "and I hurried all I could."

"So you have been all the way back to the Big House?" asked Ca

rew.

"No," she replied, "we came straight here."

"Then how did you know I was looking for you?" he demanded.

The color ran into her face and she turned her eyes away. "I always know," she answered shyly, and took refuge with Agnes, who at that moment joined us.

"We thought Nathalie was leading us a wild goose chase," explained my sister, "but she was a true prophet, after all. I hope David is coming back to breakfast?"

"I certainly am!" he answered brightly, and I was struck by the happy change in his expression. On the way home he managed to secure a tête-à-tête with Nathalie, and I overheard him pressing her for an explanation of how it was that she "always knew."

"Aren't you conscious of it when anyone is looking at you?" she inquired. "It's something like that, I suppose. When you-when anyone

thinks of-of another person very intently, they must feel the thought as they would the gaze," she concluded, rather incoherently.

"Even when the other person is some distance away?" asked David, as they reached the steps.

"I don't think the distance matters at all," she declared, and slipped. from his side before he could question further.

Now to my mind this was only the pretty fancy of a girl in love;