The captain found Mr. Neckart standing on the stoop listening to some sound that came up from the woods.

“It is Jane singing,” he said.  “You would not hear her once in a year.  Hereditary gift!  In the old Swedish annals we read of the remarkable voices of the Svens.”

“I never heard her sing before.”  Yet he had known at once that it was she.  It was the most joyous of songs, but there was a foreboding pathos in the voice which moved him as no other sound had ever done.

“You are not going before breakfast?” cried the captain.

“Yes, and I shall not be able to come again for a long time.  Say to Miss Swendon—­But no.  I will go and bid her good-bye.”

He met her as she was crossing the plank thrown across the brook, and they stopped by the little hand-rail, not looking directly at each other:  “I came to bid you good-morning.”

“Do you take the early train, then?”

“Yes.”  He did not mean to tell her that he would not come again.  The more ordinary their parting the sooner she would forget it and him.  He had thought the matter out during the night, and being a man who was apt to under-rate himself, was convinced that the feeling which she had betrayed was but that transient flush of preference which any very young and innocent girl is apt to give to the first man of whom she makes a companion.

“There is nothing in me likely to win enduring love from her.  A more intellectual woman, indeed—­” He had gone over the argument again and again.  When he was out of sight her fancy would soon turn to this new lover, so much better suited to her in every respect.  For himself—­But he had no right, to think of himself.  He struck that thought down fiercely again as they stood together on the bridge.  No more right than he would have, were he dead, to drag down this young creature into his grave.

He patted the child on the head as it clung to her dress, and talked of the chance of more rain with perfect correctness and civility; and when Jane managed to raise her eyes to his face she found it grave and preoccupied, as it usually was over the morning papers.  He saw Van Ness coming smiling to meet her.

“It is time for me to go,” he said, his eyes passing slowly over her:  then with a hasty bow, not touching her hand, he struck through the woods to the station, thinking as he went how she was standing then on the bridge in the sunshine, with the man whom she would marry beside her.  She looked after him, her eyes full of still, deep content.  He loved her.  She had forgotten everything else.

“A perfect morning, Miss Swendon,” said Mr. Van Ness, stroking his magnificent golden beard.  “You see just this deep azure sky above the Sandwich Islands.  Now, I remember watching such a dawn on Mauna Loa.  Ah-h, you would have appreciated that.  Our friend has gone, eh?  Most active, energetic man!  I heard him tell your father he should not return soon again.”