This evening she was unusually pensive.  She had never looked lovelier or been more gracious and charming, and as Keith thought of the past and of the future,—­the long past in which they had been friends, the long future in which he would live alone,—­his thought took the form of resolve.  Why should they not always be together?  She knew that he liked her, so he had not much to do to go further.  The moon was just above the horizon, making a broad golden pathway to them.  The soft lapping of the waves against the boat seemed to be a lullaby suited to the peacefulness of the scene; and the lovely form before him, clad in soft raiment that set it off; the fair face and gentle voice, appeared to fill everything with graciousness.  Keith had more than once, in the past few weeks, considered how he would bring the subject up, and what he would say if he ever addressed her.  He did not, however, go about it in the way he had planned.  It seemed to him to come up spontaneously.  Under the spell of the Summer night they had drifted into talking of old times, and they both softened as their memory went back to their youth and their friendship that had begun among the Southern woods and had lasted so many years.

She had spoken of the influence his opinions had had with her.

“Do you know,” he said presently, “I think you have exerted more influence on my life than any one else I ever knew after I grew up?”

She smiled, and her face was softer than usual.

“I should be very glad to think that, for I think there are few men who set out in life with such ideals as you had and afterwards realize them.”

Keith thought of his father and of how steadily that old man had held to his ideals through everything.  “I have not realized them,” he said firmly.  “I fear I have lost most of them.  I set out in life with high ideals, which I got from my father; but, somehow, I seem to have changed them.”

She shook her head, with a pleasant light in her eyes.

“I do not think you have.  Do you remember what you said to me once about your ideal?”

He turned and faced her.  There was an expression of such softness and such sweetness in her face that a kind of anticipatory happiness fell on him.

“Yes; and I have always been in love with that ideal,” he said gravely.

She said gently:  “Yes, I knew it.”

“Did you?” asked Keith, in some surprise.  “I scarcely knew it myself, though I believe I have been for some time.”

“Yes?” she said.  “I knew that too.”

Keith bent over her and took both her hands in his.  “I love and want love in return—­more than I can ever tell you.”

A change came over her face, and she drew in her breath suddenly, glanced at him for a second, and then looked away, her eyes resting at last on the distance where a ship lay, her sails hanging idly in the dim haze.  It might have been a dream-ship.  At Keith’s words a picture came to her out of the past.  A young man was seated on the ground, with a fresh-budding bush behind him.  Spring was all about them.  He was young and slender and sun-browned, with deep-burning eyes and close-drawn mouth, with the future before him; whatever befell, with the hope and the courage to conquer.  He had conquered, as he then said he would to the young girl seated beside him.