“It was at Anvil Rock,” she said as simply as if she had been thinking aloud.  “I had never thought about loving him.  He had never told me that he loved me, but I knew then that he did.  Something told me while he was lying on the ground like a dead man.  What do you think it could have been?  What was it?”

Looking up she saw the shrinking in his face, and she thought it came from his dislike of any mention of painful subjects; but her whole heart was in this question so that she could not let it go without pressing it a little further.

“But tell me, dearest, can souls communicate without speech or sign—­if they only love enough?” she urged.

“You are a fanciful, romantic child,” he said, trying to smile and to speak lightly.  “Why—­the man was an utter stranger then—­you didn’t know him at all.”

He had taken her chin in his hand, and his eyes were now looking steadily into hers; but the courage of the moment fled when she involuntarily drew away.  He was alarmed at the effect of this one slight effort.

“Such things are too subtle for an old man, my child, too subtle, perhaps, for any man either young or old,” he said hurriedly and confusedly.  “You women see and feel many things that fly high above our heads.  And then I am duller than usual to-night.  I am anxious about business matters.  The river is rising rapidly, there is danger of a disastrous flood.  My boats are not in safe places, and worst of all the Cold Plague broke out to-day on one of them.  The boat is tied up to the island.  I sent it over there immediately so that you, and the rest of the family, might be in no danger from the spread of the epidemic.  But it worries me, and one of the boatmen is said to be dying.”

“Send for my Paul.  He can cure him.  The plague-stricken hardly ever die if he can get to them in time.”

She said this with a pretty air of pride in her lover, and a gentle lift of her head.  He made no reply, and she turned her eyes from the fire to his face to see why he was silent so long.  He was pale with a strange gray pallor, and he met her gaze with a startled, alarmed look.  It was the look of a man who blanches and shrinks before some sudden great temptation.  She misread the look, taking it for unwillingness to send for her lover.

“You mustn’t think of sending for Doctor Colbert if you prefer the other doctor,” with swift, fiery jealousy.  “But I warn you that if you do, the man will certainly die.”

“Do you know where he is to be found in case I should want to send for him?” he said after a moment’s silence, and with constraint and hesitation.

“He is riding so much that it is hard to tell; but, uncle, dear,” melting and putting her arms about him, “I should not be really offended, of course, if you were to send for the other doctor.  You can, dear, if you want to.  I like him ever so much better myself, since he took such good care of my Paul.”