not turn to the Swenson house, but went back to the beach. After a moment, Jane, wrapping a cloak about her, followed them.

CHAPTER VIII.

CERTAINLY," said Audrey. "I will go down to the sands for a while. Unless," bluntly, "your being with me would annoy Miss Derby. I will not do that. Going or not going, is of no importance to me.'

Of no importance? Niel Goddard looked at her. The grapes out of reach became desirable. At that moment he first felt a real love for her. It was real, though purely of the Goddard kind.

"There is no reason why it should matter anything to Jane," he said quietly. "None?" Yea was yea to Audrey Swenson, and nay, nay. Her large blue eyes rested on him steadily for a minute as they walked on together. After that some impalpable veil which she had let fall between them was gone.

There is so little to tell of these two who were going down together, and of Jane following behind, that I am tempted to give up the story. But after all what is all life but the history of some man and some woman-lovers, or husband and wife, or mother and child, with a background of sea sand or farm-house or city street, trying to catch hands-to find in each other something which they lack in themselves or in God? Marriage seldom makes a break in the story. Sometimes the knife or pistol interferes to put a vulgar, bloody, cluttered end to the fine tragedy or comedy, and then it becomes public.

The mist was heavy, and not only hid Jane, but carried their voices toward her. No scruples had she about eaves-dropping; her notions of honor were never accurate nor neat. Fighting for her life as she was just now, all the world for her had gone down into those two shadows in the mistthe woman's a little taller than the man's, and held carefully apart; for Audrey had an odd habit of walking free, and alone. "If she once touches hands with him, that will be the sign it is all over," thought Jane, guessing at even the personal whims of the woman who had taken her place. She knew well-no guessing there-all that would go in that other and smaller shadow, into the marriage. Just now, when she loved him best, she held up his faults and minauderies and jeered at them savagely. "If she knew him as I do, she would

not care for him; she is not a fool!" she said. She knew by the merest drift of a word the current of their talk; for Niel, like all "brilliant conversationalists" was apt to repeat himself. "Now he is telling her about his mother; every woman cries when he tells about his mother; now he is on his struggles to keep art out of trade; he makes the common run of women think he could feed himself on fame and his aspirations without market-money. Aspirations, indeed! Though it does seem as if his soul kept his body alive," said Jane, faithful in her rage, with a choke and sob in her throat. "And now-now he is letting silence speak for him." One of his maxims was, that with souls nearest akin to our own, intuition took the place of words." She knew all his maximis as she did her alphabet; they were a sort of alphabet to her, in fact.

66

Dropping the cloak-hood from her ears, Jane came closer to catch their words more distinctly. They had stopped below a headland on the beach. She was hidden in its shadow; between them lay a patch. of wet sand. The moon was bright enough for her to see Goddard's face. She knew it in all its moods, but never had seen it kindled with such resolve and intentness as now. But could she have heard their words she would have found that this was assuredly on Audrey's part no love-making.

"What I want from you," deliberately as if she were buying sugar from a grocer, "is to tell me what my voice, touch, and knowledge of music are worth. These are only my tools, to be sure, but I must know whether they are good tools or not. I never met anybody before who could tell me."

"It would need five years, at least, of severe study to give you such power of expression as would content you."

She nodded gravely. "I thought it would be longer. Well, I can give that,"

"You would not be a very young girl at the end of five years," essayed Goddard, after a cautious pause. "It is the very time of life which most women give to dreams and fancy, and to-love."

She was looking at him anxiously, with precisely the practical air that she might have worn had she doubted that the sugar was good. "I'm not sure;" thoughtfully, "but I don't think that I know what dreams and love are, as other women do.”

Niel Goddard was no sensualist, but he drew his breath faster as his eye ran over the delicate yet strong hand and arm which

Na

the cloak left bare. The swelling throat, the erect head of the girl, held at a level with his own, were unique, in his knowledge of women, in their beauty and power. ture, he remembered, made no mistakes. Cleopatra in soul or body was not better fitted for the subtile communion of spirit, the kindling of passion, than this cold, unawakened child. "I don't believe," she continued with a grave simplicity, "that God made me to be a wife or mother." "You think," said Goddard, as grave as she, "that instead, he has given you a message to deliver ?” ́

She turned sharply. "Who told you that I thought that? I never did. I never put that into words." She was greatly shaken, and finally, without recovering herself, walked hastily away from him. He followed her, speaking as though she had not answered him at all.

66

You are not sure of your means of expression in music. But are you sure of

what you want to say?"

66 Yes. I know that. I do know that. If I were not sure of that—what would become of me?"

Goddard stopped to consider. He began to comprehend how this one idea possessed this lonely woman, almost to insanity. She had always been so simple in words and manner that he had begun to think her ignorant of her exceptional power, and shallow in feeling, to deficiency. Now, he feared to meddle, to suggest an idea to her, as though he had been about to thrust his rough hand into the chorded strings of a harp. If his words should be coarse, jar against this belief, offend her!

"In your message is it only the sky or sea you must interpret? Has no other woman a share in it? No man?"

She laughed. Her secret was shut down by this time quite out of sight-no glimpse of emotion in the steady blue eye. Outside of her secret, the world was still but a cheerful holiday ground to Audrey. "What could I have to say for humanity? Humanity for me means my uncle and Kit." "And me?" carelessly.

had been the objects of his fervent shortlived friendships. "All other women have petted Niel. This is the first one whom he could protect," she thought shrewdly. The danger, therefore, was real.

But Jane tapped her thin breast, under which a paper rustled. "He will never marry her while he is a poor man. And the Stonepost Farm is mine-mine.'

Nothing was easier than to join them; to prevent Goddard, by her mere presence, from betraying his feeling, and when they were alone together to show him the paper,

"in a light, joking way," she resolved," as if it would be impossible for me to interfere with his good fortune. It is precisely the absurd romantic kind of generosity which Niel would appreciate. He will believe afterward in this girl's 'largesse for mankind' just as entirely; he will pay homage to her hair and eyes and genius, for a week or two, but he will never make her his wife while I own the Stonepost Farm. Market-money versus Aspiration! I know which will win." With bitter tears in her eyes she buttoned her cloak, looking for a dry path, for the sand on which she stood was uncomfortably wet and clammy, but seeing none, struck boldly across the sunken space between herself and him. The next moment she looked down. Was it mud on which she walked? It gave way quickly to her tread, but closed and clung about her shoes. Her feet sank deeper with each step; the weight of the wet sand, if sand it were, grew heavy on them as though it were glue. Before she was onethird of the way across her ankles were not strong enough to drag them out. "Niel! Niel!" she cried.

"Miss Derby has followed us," Audrey exclaimed, and hurried to meet her. Goddard came slowly after her with an impatient shrug, muttering something about being spied upon perpetually. Audrey stopped.

She does not move," turning to him startled, " and this is near

"I cannot move," cried Jane. "It feels as if some one were dragging my feet down." "So like a woman!" muttered Goddard. "She has run open-eyed into a swamp, and cries to be taken out of it." But Audrey caught him by the shoulder breathlessly. Stop! Let me see where we are," turning her pale face from side to side. "The lighthouse to the left. Symme's pond at our back. Merciful God! she is in the quicksand!"

Goddard shook her off. "Let me go. Keep still, Jenny. Don't struggle, I'm coming. Let go my arm, I say!" But Audrey held him in a grip like iron.

"No, I'll not let you go. You don't

understand. Three men have been lost in that quicksand, with the whole village looking on. There's no help possible. You would only sink with her."

"Yes, I am heavier than she, that's true," wiping the cold sweat from his face. "But, good God! I can't stand here and see Jenny Derby die! You don't know what she has been to me, woman! Let me go. I can die with her." He shook her off, and shivering and quaking stretched out his hands to Jane, who stood quite motionless, hearing every word that was spoken, but uttering neither word nor cry. It was natural that the other woman should hold him back. But he loves me! Me." The thought flashed through her like a fiery heat of triumph. For herself she suffered no physical pain. It was incredible that she could be in imminent danger. Her feet and ankles were buried in the sand, which had now closed firmly about them. She was not conscious of the slow, steady sinking.

Audrey had loosed her hold. "But you will not go," she said, as an older person speaks to a younger. "I do not mean that she shall die. There must be a way. We shall find one. I am going for Kit and the people. Stand here, Mr. Goddard. Just here. You can give her great comfort and strength by speaking to her. But if you go to her you only cause her to sink faster. Remember that." She disappeared swift as a shadow.

Goddard held out his arms across the dull gray space. "I could not bear the agony of seeing her die!" glancing up to heaven in a confidential way, and wiping the cold sweat from his face. Then he called to her: "If I cannot devise a way to save you, I will come, and we will die together, Jenny." "Yes, Niel," she said quietly. Her head fell upon her breast. In her ordinary moods Jane would have struggled against dying, tried medicines and doctors with all the alertness and shrewdness of her small body and small mind, but death had taken her by the throat when she was in a manner lifted above her usual self by passion and jealousy. She was calm to heroism. It seemed to her a simple and natural thing that this man whom she loved should come to die with her.

As for Goddard, he stood still. Ten steps would bring him at any minute beside her, on to the swaying shadow which the moon made of her figure on the fatal glistening flat of sand. Death seemed to him at that moment a drink divine. Surrounded by the somber majesty of the night, in the vast silence of sea and shore, going like a young god to the side of this faithful creature who loved him with doglike affection-it was to pass the dark portals as a hero or a king! Indeed, the first line of a poem descriptive of the sacrifice he meant to make rushed into his heated brain.

Meanwhile, with his hands outstretched, the wind blowing back his hair from his white, set face, instinct with all its noble meanings, he was a very fair type of a hero.

CHAPTER IX.

GODDARD, after awhile, recovering from his rapt contemplation of death, was conscious of a crowd of people ringed about the quicksand. There was but little noise: the most of them being horrified into silence. Kit Graff's big, burly figure was nearest to him. "Tut! tut!" was all that Kit could find to say, now that the crisis which poor Jenny had foreseen was upon her. Goddard turned from him disgusted.

"You might as well have brought_one of his own oxen," he thundered to Audrey. The little man's fiery indignation was always ready to blaze forth recklessly at any hint of cowardice or lack of feeling.

The moon was up now; sea and quicksand, the whispering groups of women and arguing men, stood out clear against its ghastly pallor to Goddard's eye as a black picture on a white ground-one of Fuseli's terrible outlines. In the midst, with the treacherous pitfall around her, underneath which lay death and the grave, Jane crouched on the ground a black tumbled heap. Her heroism had evaporated; she struggled and cried and shrieked and threw herself to and fro as any other poor unreasoning animal would do, sucked into the jaws of death inch by inch. How far her body had really sunken it was impossible to tell owing to her crouching position.

But now that she had wakened to the fear of death for herself, she was suddenly conscious that it might come to Goddard. She stopped short in her cries for help (which had been so shrill and piteous as

to drive the blood to the heart of every man there) the moment she heard his loud protestation of his resolve to die with her, and listened intently. Then she stood up and called out to them with a certain tone of authority.

"You men, I'll not cry for you to help me again. I don't want to vex any of my friends. But I'll pay any man well that will come to save me. And I'll pay you double if you will keep Mr. Goddard back. For God's sake keep him back."

The moonlight showed her her Apollo, poised vehement, as though ready to spring to her from the heights of heaven. She could see the upturned flash of his blue eyes, the moonlight was so bright; see even the intaglio which dangled from his watchchain over his blue sailor shirt; and she remembered, poor Jane, how she had gone without meat and butter for a year, to buy and send it to him anonymously. "He thought old Shively sent it; and that pleased him better," she thought, looking at him with a queer, tender smile, even while the dead weight on her legs tugged cold and heavy, as though her feet were in truth already in the grave. So that he were pleased, what did it matter who had had the credit?

The hum of voices began to grow dull to her ears; the black encircling line of figures swam and swayed like a mist; only Goddard stood out distinct. If she died he would suffer so! It seemed to her but little matter whether she lived or died if he could be kept safe in his youth and brilliance and power. And yet an hour ago she had intended, in her mean, selfish spite, to rob him of his inheritance, to keep him from marrying the woman she thought he loved. She stretched out her hands to him. If she could but creep into some corner of the world, and watch him from there, happy with any woman, even with Audrey! What! was poor Jane Derby to be the wife of such a man!

It was but a little while that she was thus driven in on herself by the hold of death, but it first taught her what love was, as it does many a woman and man. After that the very cold and pain and physical nervous shock conquered her, and she fell into a sort of stupor.

The villagers, during those few minutes, had great difficulty in keeping Goddard back. He was quite sincere in his efforts to dash across the sand and perish with her. However, they held him, while they

Audrey, who was the only woman who was not weeping, and who did not join the men in their talk, came up now to Graff. "I thought or heard of a way, long ago, that seems worth trying. If she had thin, stout planks, such as the staves of a hogshead, and could drive them into the sand about her, in a circle-sloping in, you understand, until they met below her feetthe sand in which she stood would then be motionless and we could easily drag her out of it."

There was the usual civil, doubting pause with which men receive a practical suggestion from women. Then Pike nodded. "Seems to be somethin' in that, Mr. Graff, provided we had the staves. But staves don't lie loose around hyar on the beach. Nor axes to drive 'em. Before we'd bring 'em, that poor young creature'll be drawed out of sight."

"The difficulty would be," said Graff, "that she is not strong enough to drive the staves sufficiently deep. But we'll go for them, boys," nodding to a group of young men. After they were gone the others went on talking.

"Who is this young woman? Derby? Don't know the name. Don't belong to Sussex county." Audrey paid no heed to those whisperings going about, until one question made her prick up her ears.

"Is she got any Cortrell blood? 'd like to know that. If she has there's no chance for her. The sea'll never give up its old grudge agin the Cortrells."

"It is not possible that she should have any Cortrell blood in her veins?" going up anxiously to Goddard as he stood gloomily apart, his eyes closed to keep out the death scene in which he could not share. foreboding to-night was strange. Women with the second-sight always have those clear gray eyes. What do you think, eh?"

"Her

Audrey's shudder, her evident belief in the superstition itself threw Goddard quite out of his agony, just as a switch puts a train off one track on to another. He stared at her as Hamlet at

the murdered Dane. "Her grandfather or aunt or somebody was a Cortrell! I remember now hearing her once talk of them."

"Now," said Graff to the men, who, like himself carried a lot of these planks on their backs, "Lay them here. Stand out of the way, if you please, Mr. Goddard. You're the strongest, Joe. When I call out to you, steady!' you're to throw the planks to me, one at a time."

"Where are you going?" Audrey stepped in front of him. Her face more than

her hand barred his way.

"Stand aside, child. There's no time to lose. She's not able to drive the staves, but I am, I fancy. I can reach her safe enough, and when I reach her we're safe enough, too." Goddard wondered why the man, if he did propose to play the hero, could not shape his sentences more grammatically and dramatically.

and thrusting Graff aside, "I am ready, God knows, to risk or give my life for her." "Very likely," said Graff, coolly, "you can find another axe and follow if you like. You can't have this one. I don't reckon you're much of a pile-driver, though," looking down contemptuously on the thin little man dilated with heroic resolve. "You understand, boys? Heft me the planks as I call for them. Bye-bye, child," looking down at Audrey for an instant, and then turning quickly away.

"You must not go, Kit," and down went her voice to a whisper,—“ She is a Cortrell." "The

Graff unquestionably lost color. devil!" stopping short, axe in hand. “So she is. I remember now. Well," drawing breath, "no matter." He turned to the quicksand again. But as he passed Audrey he laid his hand on her shoulder, and

child," once more.