“Why, dear heart, don’t you know that couldn’t be done?”

“Oh, I know it, you being what you are, even though I am only what I am.  But, Isabel, you know he loves you.  No human soul is strong enough to blow out the flame of the love you kindle, Isabel Morris, as one would blow out his bedroom candle and go to sleep at the stroke of a clock.”

“Arthur, I believe Leonard—­and I do not say it in his praise—­I believe Leonard can do that!”

“No, not so, not so!  Leonard is strong, but the fire of a strong man’s love, however smothered, burns on without mercy, my beautiful, and you cannot go in and out of that burning house as though it were not on fire.”

“And shall Leonard, then, not be our nearest and best friend, as we had planned?”

“He shall, Isabel.  Ah yes; not one smallest part of your sweet friendship will I take from him, nor of his from you.  For, Isabel, though he were as weak as I”—­

“As weak as I, you should say, dear.  You are not weak, Arthur, are you?”

“Weak as the bending grass, Isabel, under this load of love.  But though he, I say, were as weak as I, you—­ah, you!—­are as wise as you are bewitching; and if I should speak to you from my most craven fear, I could find but one word of warning.”

“Oh, you dear, blind flatterer!  And what word would that be?”

“That you are most bewitching when you are wisest.”

As Isabel softly laughed she cast a dreaming glance behind, and noticed that she and Arthur were quite hidden in the flowery undergrowth of the hill path.  They kissed.

“Beloved,” said her worshipper, with a clouded smile, as he let her down from her tiptoes, “do you know you took that as though you were thinking of something else?”

“Did I?  Oh, I didn’t mean to.”

Such a reply only darkened the cloud.  “Of whom were you thinking, Isabel?”

She blushed.  “I was think—­thinking—­why, I was—­I—­I was think—­thinking”—­she went redder and redder as he went pale—­“thinking of everybody on Bylow Hill.  Why—­why, dear heart, don’t you see?  When you”—­

“Oh, enough, enough, my angel!  I take the question back!”

“You made me think of everybody, Arthur, you were so sudden.  Just suppose I had done so to you!” They both thought that worthy of a good laugh.  “Next time, dear,” added Isabel,—­“no, no, no, but—­next time, you mustn’t be so sudden.  There’s no need, you know,”—­she blushed again,—­“and I promise you I’ll give my whole mind to it!  Get me some of that hawthorn bloom yonder, and let’s go back.”

IV

AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER

This “hill path” was a narrowed continuance of the street, that led gradually down along the hill’s steep face to reach the town and the river meadows.  Godfrey, halting before Ruth and her brother, watched the blooming hawthorn, over there, bend and shake and straighten and bend again, above Arthur’s unseen hands.  Then, glancing furtively back toward Mrs. Morris, he muttered to Ruth, while Leonard gravely looked out across the landscape, “I live and learn.”