The slight flush of laughter faded from her face; the white fatigue came back; and she passed the back of one hand wearily across her brow, clearing it of the damp curls.

“The deadly sultriness of these nights,” she sighed.  “I was no longer able to endure the heat under the eaves among my dusty husks.  So lately I have stolen at night to the Spring Waiontha to bathe in the still, cold pools.  Oh, Euan, it is most delicious!  I have slept there until dawn, lying up to my throat in the crystal flood.”  She laughed again.  “And once, lying so, asleep, my body slipped and in I slid, deep, deep in, and awoke in a dreadful fright half drowned.”

“Is it wise to sleep so in the Water?” I asked uneasily.

“Oh!  Am I ever wise?” she said wearily.  “And the blood beats in my veins these heated nights so that I am like to suffocate.  I made a bed for me by Mrs. Rannock, but she sobbed in her sleep all night and I could not close my eyes, So I thought of the Spring Waiontha, and the next instant was on my way there, feeling the path with naked feet through the starlight, and dropped my clothing from me in the darkness and sank into the cool, sweet pool.  Oh, it was heaven, Euan!  I would you might come also.”

“I can walk as far as the pool with you, at all events,” said I.

“Wonderful!  And will you?”

“Do I ever await asking to follow you anywhere?” said I sentimentally.

But she only laughed at me and led the way across the dreary strip of clearing, moving with a swift confidence in her knowledge of the place, which imitating, I ran foul of a charred stump, and she heard what I said.

“Poor lad!” she exclaimed contritely, slipping her hand into mine.  “I should have guided you.  Does it pain you?”

“Not much.”

Our hands were clasped, and she pressed mine with all the sweet freedom of a comradeship which means nothing deeper.  For I now had learned from her own lips, sadly enough, how it was with her—­ how she regarded our friendship.  It was to her a deep and living thing—­ a noble emotion, not a passion—­ a belief founded on gratitude and reason, not a confused, blind longing and delight possessing every waking moment, ever creating for itself a thousand tender dreams or fanciful and grotesque apprehensions.

Clear-headed so far, reasonable in her affection, gay or tender as the mood happened, convinced that what I declared to be my love for her was but a boy’s exaggeration for the same sentiments she entertained toward me, how could she have rightly understood the symptoms of this amazing malady that possessed me—­ these reasonless extremes of ardour, of dejection, of a happiness so keen and thrilling that it pained sometimes, and even at moments seemed to make me almost drunk.

Nor did I myself entirely comprehend what ailed me, never having been able to imagine myself in love, or ever dreamed that I possessed the capacity for such a violent devotion to any woman.  I think now, at that period, somewhere under all the very real excitement and emotion of an adolescent encountering for the first time the sweet appeal of youthful mind and body, that I seemed to feel there might be in it all something not imperishable.  And caught myself looking furtively and a little fearfully at her, at times, striving to conceive myself indifferent.