“Verry, can you keep people away from me when I live here?”

“I do not like that feeling in you.”

“I like fishermen.”

“And a boat?”

“Yes, I’ll have a boat.”

“I shall never go out with you.”

“Cass will.  I shall cruise with her, and you, in your house, need not see us depart.  Eric the Red made excursions in this region.  We will skirt the shores, which are the same, nearly, as when he sailed from them, with his Northmen; and the ancient barnacles will think, when they see her fair hair, which she will let ripple around her stately shoulders, that he has come back with his bride.”

Verry looked with delight at him and then at me.  “Her long, yellow hair and her stately shoulders,” she repeated.

“Will you go?” he asked.

“Of course,” I answered, going downstairs.  I happened to look back on the way.  His arm was round Verry, but he was looking after me.  He withdrew it as our eyes met, and came down; but she remained, looking from the window.  We went into the parlor, and I shut the door.

“Now then,” I said.

He took a note from his pocket and gave it to me.

I broke its seal, and read:  “Tell Ben, before you can reflect upon it, that I will go abroad, and then repent of it,—­as I shall.  Desmond.”

“‘Tell Ben,’” I repeated aloud, “‘that I will go abroad.  Desmond.’”

“Do you guess, as he does, that my reason for going was that I might be kept aloof from all sight and sound of you and him?  In the result toward which I saw you drive I could have no part.”

“Stay; I know that he will go.”

“You do not know.  Nor do you know what such a man is when—­” checking himself.

“He is in love?”

“If you choose to call it that.”

“I do.”

All there was to say should be said now; but I felt more agitated than was my wont.  These feelings, not according with my housewifely condition, upset me.  I looked at him; he began to walk about, taking up a book, which he leaned his head over, and whose covers he bent back till they cracked.

“You would read me that way,” I said.

“It is rather your way of reading.”

“Can you remember that Desmond and I influence each other to act alike?  And that we comprehend each other without collision?  I love him, as a mature woman may love,—­once, Ben, only once; the fire-tipped arrows rarely pierce soul and sense, blood and brain.”

He made a gesture, expressive of contempt.

“Men are different; he is different.”

“You have already spoken for me, and, I suppose, you will for him.”

“I venture to.  Desmond is a violent, tyrannical, sensual man; his perceptions are his pulses.  That he is handsome, clever, resolute, and sings well, I can admit; but no more.”

“We will not bandy his merits or his demerits between us.  Let us observe him.  And now, tell me,—­what am I?”