“It will be very pleasant,” she said, without looking at him.  “It’s moonlight now.”

“Oh, I sha’n’t have any use for the moon.  I shall get over before nightfall, if this breeze holds.”

She tried to think of something else, and to get away from this talk of a sail to Leyden, but she fatally answered, “I saw your boat this afternoon.  I had n’t noticed before that it was still here.”

He hesitated a moment, and then asked, “Did you happen to notice the dory?”

“Yes, it was drawn up on the sand.”

“I suppose it’s all right—­if it’s in the same place.”

“It seemed to be,” she answered faintly.

“I’m going to give the boat to Johnson.”

She did not say anything, for she could think of nothing to say, but that she had looked for seals on the reef, but had not seen any, and this would have been too shamelessly leading.  That left the word to him, and he asked timidly,—­

“I hope my coming don’t seem intrusive, Miss Breen?”

She did not heed this, but “You are going to be gone a great while?” she asked, in turn.

“I don’t know,” he replied, in an uncertain tone, as if troubled to make out whether she was vexed with him or not.  “I thought,” he added, “I would go up the Nile this time.  I’ve never been up the Nile, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.  Well,” she added to herself, “I wish you had not come back!  You had better not have come back.  If you had n’t come, you would have got my letter.  And now it can never be done!  No, I can’t go through it all again, and no one has the right to ask it.  We have missed the only chance,” she cried to herself, in such keen reproach of him that she thought she must have spoken aloud.

“Is Mrs. Maynard all right again?” he asked.

“Yes, she is very much better,” she answered, confusedly, as if he had heard her reproach and had ignored it.

“I hope you’re not so tired as you were.”

“No, I ’m not tired now.”

“I thought you looked a little pale,” he said sympathetically, and now she saw that he was so.  It irritated her that she should be so far from him, in all helpfulness, and she could scarcely keep down the wish that ached in her heart.

We are never nearer doing the thing we long to do than when we have proclaimed to ourselves that it must not and cannot be.

“Why are you so pale?” she demanded, almost angrily.

“I?  I didn’t know that I was,” he answered.  “I supposed I was pretty well.  I dare say I ought to be ashamed of showing it in that way.  But if you ask me, well, I will tell you; I don’t find it any easier than I did at first.”

“You are to blame, then!” she cried.  “If I were a man, I should not let such a thing wear upon me for a moment”

“Oh, I dare say I shall live through it,” he answered, with the national whimsicality that comes to our aid in most emergencies.