and wrestled with a novel power that while it promised pleasure gave only pain.  It made her suffer to see John suffer:  she hurt him as little as she could, but for the life of her she was able to do no differently.  She thought it would be better for him if she should die; and when she found his great sad eyes fastened on her, with their longing for her return to him, she wished to disappear out of the world and his memory together.  She grew whiter and thinner, more tired and sore at heart, all the time, till the two years that had been fixed as the period of their engagement had passed—­grew so transparent and spiritual that sometimes, as John hung over her in despair, he felt as if, instead of being bound to a dead woman, he were already bound to an angel.

One evening, after an absence, Reyburn came in as John sat reading by Lilian’s side:  he brushed away the book and insisted on their playing an odd new game of cards, and Lilian unaccountably brightened and sparkled and laughed, as in the old time, for more than an hour; and as he left them at last he came back to declare his belief that a change was all Lilian needed—­other climates, other scenes.  “Come, Sterling,” said he, “my little yacht, the Beachbird, sails on a cruise next week.  I will have a cabin fitted up for Miss Lilian if you will take her and her mother and come along.  The house can keep itself; your clerks can keep your books; we shall all escape the east winds.  It will be a certain cure for her, and do you good yourself.”

And talking of it lightly at first, presently it grew feasible—­all the more so that Helen and her father were spending their second winter down there in one of those “summer isles of Eden,” and word could be sent to them in advance to be in readiness to join the Beachbird.  And the end of all the talk was that at the close of the next week John’s business had been left in the hands of others, and John and Lilian and her mother were on the Beachbird’s deck as she slipped down the harbor.

Mr. Reyburn’s prophecy proved true:  whether the sea-breeze fanned Lilian into fresh life, whether there were healing balms in the perpetual summer through which they sailed, or whether she abandoned herself to the pleasures of the flying hours, she began to regain strength and color, her languor disappeared, she spent the day in the soft blissful air with her books or work, her mother knitting and nodding near by; while John, if not sick himself, yet feeling very miserable, lay on a mattress on the deck, sometimes dozing, sometimes following with his eye the graceful lines and snowy dazzle of the perfect little yacht as mast and sheet and shroud made their relief upon the sky; sometimes listening to Lilian and Reyburn; sometimes watching them as they walked up and down in the twilight, her dress fluttering round her and her fair hair blowing in the wind.  John wondered at her as he watched her:  she seemed to be possessed with an unnatural life; a flickering, dancing sort of fire burned in her eye, on her cheek and lip, in her restless manner:  she was like one who after long slumber felt herself alive and receiving happiness at every pore, but a strange, treacherous sort of happiness that might slip away and leave her at any moment, and which she was ever on the alert to keep.