“Of course women have done braver things,” said one man, with sporting tendencies, “but it was the neat, gamy way in which she did it that took my eye.  Her method was as complete and rounded out as herself.  Jove! as she bent over that child she was a nymph that would turn the head of a Greek.”

“She has evidently turned the head of a Cyprian,” laughed one of his friends.

“Come, that’s putting it too strong,” said the man, with a frown.  “I’ll affect no airs, though.  I’m not a saint, as you all know, but the aspect of that girl, in her self-forgetful effort, might well make me wish I were one.  She is as good and pure-hearted as the child she saved.  If there had been a flaw in the white marble of her nature she would have been self-conscious.  An angel from heaven couldn’t have been more absorbed in the one impulse to save.”

Graydon had approached the group unobserved, and heard these words.  He walked away, smiling, with the thought, “My sentiments, clearly expressed.”

The night was warm, and he saw Miss Wildmere and Arnault going out for a stroll.  Following a half-defined inclination, he bent his steps toward the lake.  The moon was mirrored in its glassy surface, the place silent and deserted.  With slight effort of fancy he called up the scene again.  He saw in the moonlight the fairy form of the child, and what even others had regarded as the embodiment of human loveliness and truth bending over it.

“And she was the little ghost that once haunted me,” he thought, “and seemed all eyes and affection.  How those eyes used to welcome and turn to me, as if in some subtle way she drew from me the power to exist at all.  I wish I could follow the processes of her change from the hour of our parting, and see how I passed from what I was to her to what I am now.  She does not seem to forget or ignore the past.  She is not conventional, and never was; hence, friendship may not mean what it does to so many of her sex and age—­a little moony sentiment blended with calculation as to a fellow’s usefulness.  If we could enjoy something of the good-comradeship that obtains between man and man, she is the one woman of the world with whom I should covet the relation.  Stella, in herself, is all that I could ask for a wife, but I don’t like her family much better than Henry does.  Confound the father!  Why should he so mix his daughter up in his speculation that she dare not dismiss Arnault at once and follow her heart?  If I were not a good-natured man I wouldn’t submit to it.  As it is, since I am sure of the girl, I suppose I should give paterfamilias a chance to turn himself.  She has appealed to me as delicately, yet as openly, as she can, and has given me to understand by everything except plain words that she is mine.  Probably that is all she can do without bringing black ruin upon them all.  Well, I suppose I should imitate her self-sacrificing spirit; but I hate this jumbling of Wall Street with