me a horror of a plodding life. I said to myself, 'What is the use of it?' Of pleasure there was no question. But I could go back to that plodding life to-morrow if I chose. Don't you believe it, Pauline?""Yes."
"Yet you don't say--try?" "Try, by all means."
"At a safe distance from you!"
"Yes, at a safe distance from me," Pauline answered. "I should do you no good; I am not enough in earnest. I am never in earnest long about anything. I am changeable, too--you have no idea how changeable. There has been no opportunity to show you."
"Is that a threat? You know that I am deeply in love with you." He did not move as he said this, but his eyes were fixed passionately
upon her face.
"I neither know it nor believe it; it is with you simply as it is with me--there is no one else here." She stood there watching the wavelets break at her feet. Nothing in her countenance corresponded in the least with the description she had just given of herself.
"How you say that! What am I to think of you? You have a face to worship: does it lie?" said Ash.
"Oh, my face!" She turned, and began to cross the field towards the farm.
"It shouldn't have that expression, then," he said, joining her, and walking by her side. "I don't believe you know what it is yourself, Pauline--that expression. It seems to say as you talk, coming straight from those divine lips, those sweet eyes: 'I could love you. Be good and I will.' Why, you have almost made me determine to be 'good' again, almost made me begin to dream of going back to that plodding life that I loathe. And you don't know what I am."
Mrs. Graham did not answer; she did not look up, though she knew that his head was bent beseechingly towards her.
John Ash was obliged to bend; he was very tall. His figure was rather thin, and he had a slouching gait; his broad shoulders and
well-knit muscles showed that he had plenty of force, and his slouching step seemed to come from laziness, as though he found it
too much trouble to plant his feet firmly, to carry his long length erect. He was holding his hat in his hand, and the light from the sea
showed his face clearly, its good points and its bad. His head was well shaped, covered with thick brown hair, closely cut; but, in spite
of the shortness, many silver threads could be seen on the brown--a premature silver, as he was not yet thirty-five. His face was
beardless, thin, with a bold eagle-like outline, and strong, warm blue eyes, the blue eyes that go with a great deal of color. Ordinarily, Ash had now but little color; that is, there was but little red; his complexion had a dark brown hue; there were many deep lines. The mouth, the worst feature, had a cynical droop; the jaw conveyed suggestions that were not agreeable. The expression of the whole countenance was that of recklessness and cleverness, both of no common order. Of late the recklessness had often changed into
a more happy merriment when he was with Pauline, the careless merriment of a boy; one could see then plainly how handsome he must have been before the lines, and the heaviness, and, alas! the evil, had come to darken his youth, and to sadden (for so it must have been) his silent, frightened-looking mother.
They reached the farm; he led out the horses, and mounted her. She gathered up the reins; but he still held the bridle. "How tired you look!" he said.
Her face was flushed slightly, high on the cheeks close under the eyes; between the fair eyebrows a perpendicular line was visible; for
the moment, she showed to the full her thirty years.
"Yes, I am tired; and it's dangerous to tire me," she answered, smiling. She had recovered her light-hearted carelessness.
Ash still looked at her. A sudden conviction seemed to seize him. "Don't throw me over, Pauline," he pleaded. And as he spoke, on his brown, deeply lined face there was an expression which was boyishly young and trusting.
"As I told you, so long as there is no one else," Pauline answered.
The next moment they were flying over the plain.
III
The table d'hote of the Star of Italy, the Salerno inn from whose mysteries (of eels and chestnuts) Mrs. Preston had fled--this
unctuous table d'hote had been unusually brilliant during this month of March; upon several occasions there had been no less than
fifteen travellers present, and the operatic young landlord himself, with his affectionate smile, had come in to hand the peas.
The most unnoticed person was always a tall woman of fifty-five, who, entering with noiseless step, slipped into her chair so quickly
and furtively that it seemed as if she were afraid of being seen standing upon her feet. Once in her place, she ate sparingly, looking neither to the right nor the left, holding her knife and fork with care, and laying them down cautiously, as though she were trying not to waken some one who was asleep. But the table d'hote of the Star of Italy was never asleep; the travellers, English and American, could not help feeling that they were far from home on this shore where so recently brigands had prowled. It is well known that this feeling promotes conversation.
One evening a pink-cheeked woman, who wore a little round lace cap perched on the top of her smooth gray hair, addressed the silent stranger at her left hand. "You have been to Paestum, I dare say?" she said, in her pleasant English voice.
"No."
"But you are going, probably? Directly we came, yesterday morning, we engaged horses and started at once." "I don't know as I care about going."
"Not to see the temples?"
17
"I didn't know as there were temples," murmured the other, shyly.
"Fancy! But you really ought to go, you know," the pleasant voice resumed, doing a little missionary work (which can never come amiss). "The temples are well worth seeing; they are Greek."
"I've been ter see a good many buildings already: in Paris there were a good many; my son took me," the tall woman answered, her tone becoming more assured as she mentioned "my son."
"But these temples are--are rather different. I was saying to our neighbor here that she really ought on no account to miss going down to Paestum," the fresh-faced Englishwoman continued, addressing her husband, who sat next to her on the right, for the mo-
ment very busy with his peas (which were good, but a little oily). "The drive is not difficult. And we found it most interesting."
"Interesting? It may well be interesting; finest Greek remains outside of Athens," answered the husband, a portly Warwickshire
vicar. He bent forward a little to glance past his wife at this ignorer of temples at her other hand. "American," he said to himself, and returned to his peas.
The friendly vicaress offered a few words more the next day. Coming in from her walk, in her stout shoes, and broad straw hat gar-nished with white muslin, she was entering the inn by the back door, when she espied her neighbor of the dinner-table sitting near by on a bench. There was nothing to see but a paling fence; she was unoccupied, unless a basket with Souvenir de Lucerne on one side,
