first greetings were over-on his part as joyous as though the separation had lasted several years instead of hours; then, struck by something in her face, "Why, you poor, dear Girl! isn't there any way I can be of help to you?" he whispered softly.

"Yes, by not being so kind and sympathetic." There was a slight catch in the Girl's voice, and she mopped away two big tears that had started at the unconcealed tenderness in his voice -tears which had refused to be merely winked away. "I always act like a perfect goose when people are sorry for me. It's quite bad enough to have to be sorry for myself, and I ought to be ashamed to bother you with my troubles."

"Bother me!" Hazeltine's voice was very low. "Do you think that you could 'bother me'-except by not letting me see you, and-and-trying to help you bear things? Tell me all about it."

"There's really not much to tell save that my ex-Chief's cousin's wife's sister," she paused an instant with an irrepressible smile at the sound of the words, "has at last got the job I wanted so much to keep. Really, it is an excessively small thing to be so tragic about, isn't it? Yesterday I was called to the main office and told that they were about to reduce the office force, for the present, and, naturally enough, the last comers would be laid off' first-a euphonious way of saying you are discharged. But what made it hit me, personally, so hard, was when Mr. Mittendorf asked me to devote all of yesterday afternoon to, as he said, 'explaining to a newcomer how I had arranged my work,' and she, in the course of the instruction, let out that she was to have my place and how she came to get it."

"I never heard of such insolence," Hazeltine cried, indignantly. "The idea of daring to ask you to instruct the person who was doing you out of your job! Why didn't you refuse, point-blank?"

"What would have been the use of that?" drearily. "It would only have

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vexed him so that he would have said perfectly horrid things to any one who came to him for a reference about me. Oh, we parted amicably, if somewhat on terms of mutual suspicion. But, when it was all over, I went home and had a good cry, part discouragement, part regular genuine rage, at being made to feel so foolish in my own eyes

when that was done it was too late to come to dinner-even if I had not been a sight to scare birds off the bushes. You ought to see me when I've been crying a while-no, I mean you oughtn't."

"You might, at least, have telephoned over here, to tell me I might come and say I was sorry. Didn't you guess I would be here, waiting for you?" he said, very gently.

"I-I-wasn't sure," she faltered a little as she met his earnest eyes, then hurried on: "And I've just told you what a fright I looked, and that, in itself, is a good reason. All day today I've been hot on the trail of that elusive commodity known as a job, and one or two things really look very promising, so it may be that to-mor

row

She paused, for the musicians, as if gifted with a divine inspiration of comprehension, had begun to play one of Hungary's marvelous love-songs; and in some subtle way it pleaded Hazeltine's cause as well, if not better, than any words of his own could have done. Unconsciously the eyes of the Girl met his, and each knew the other was recalling one evening when the violinist (made voluble as much by their sympathetic interest in the music of his country as by the wine set before him) had translated its words as best he could; it was as if again both heard him saying, in his awkward English:

"An' after each verse, zey zings, first heem an' zen her, 'My life you are to me; zan all ze worl' more you are to me!''

The Girl's eyes drooped before the tenderness shining in the face of the man beside her. Underneath the tablecloth, Hazeltine groped for her

hand, and, when it was found, held it close within his own.

"Don't you know you are all thatand more, to me," he whispered. "And won't you let me try to be that to you -sweetheart ?"

Not a word did the Girl speak-only lifted her downcast eyes for a single blissful instant-and in that glance he became no longer a mere mortal, but one of the gods dwelling in Valhalla.

Then the music swung into the czardas, that quaint folk-melody with which most of the Hungarian songs end, and, as their souls were forced back to earth once more on its joyous rhythm, Hazeltine spoke again, this time with a sort of loving playfulness:

"I wonder if you'd consider the job of looking after me? My Chief told me to-day that he found I was becoming so valuable to him that my salary was to be raised. Moreover, as I've been with him five years, I think he would see the justice of allowing me two weeks off for a honeymoon-if I were to take it soon." His merry eyes scanned her blushing face as he went on: "And we must have time to look for a flat-where you are going to give me those dinners you promised, 'when you had a home of your very own.' Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember, only-it seems so long ago from that time to now-when I am so happy." The Girl looked full at him with eyes filled with shy love.

"And as if it couldn't really be true," she added, half in a whisper.

"But it is and we'll prove it. Waiter!" He gave an order in a low voice, then aloud: "We'll have to celebrate, you know; what do you suppose those musicians will do when they have glasses of real good wine offered to them?"

"They cannot do much worse than they are doing now. Do you recognize the thing they are attempting to play? No? I'm sure I don't wonder; it's the 'Stein Song'-but they appear to be playing it upside down."

"Upside down or down-side-up, it's the same good old song," and Hazeltine smiled at the memories it evoked. "The very essence of what you called 'the college spirit' that first night I met you-when we found we both came from California-do you remember?"

She nodded smiling, and he added, earnestly: "Before that wine comes, I want you to drink a little private toast with me-in this wine here, which probably came from the same place that we did, for all they are pleased to call it by Hungarian names—a toast to one of the things that made us friends," and he raised his glass and touched it to hers:

"California-may there," he said.

we go back

"California-may we go back there!" she echoed, and, looking deep into each others' eyes, they drank.

ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH.

A

WOMAN stood among the piles of lumber and waited for the train on which she had come, to pull out. It was early in the morning, so early that the gray fog still hung on the tops of the near-by hills. Fishers and longshoremen, passing to their work, conjectured, under the security of their foreign language, as to what had brought her from Los Angeles at such an hour. But the woman had the look of one whose affairs were weightier than other's opinions, and, as soon as the train moved, she crossed the track to the knot of buildings that composed the town.

They were gray, sagging buildings, saloons mostly, that some way gave the suggestion of a group of shuffling sailors. All were unpainted save for the gray coat the salt fog had given them. A flaming yellow sign proclaimed the post office. The woman went in and inquired where she could find a messenger boy. A messenger boy was a species unknown in San Pedro fifteen years ago. The postmaster stared at her in blank amazement, until a girl, peering around a limp chintz curtain in the rear, volunteered, in a hoarse voice:

"Willie Petrie, he might! He took word to Van Stone for Miss Gray the time her pa fell cleanin' the light." A quick interest flashed over the woman's face, which seemed more than desire to obtain a messenger, but it passed immediately behind her cold

reserve.

The girl continued: "That's him now a-scrubbin' the winders of the Flowin' Bowl."

The woman stepped to the sidewalk and called the boy, who came wiping his soapy hands on his trousers. "They tell me you took a message to Mr. Stone for Miss Gray. Will you carry one to him for me?" she asked.

"Yes'um, if I can find him," said the boy with the indifference of a born bargain driver.

"If you find him I'll give you a dollar."

"Bet he's on the Long Wharf; 'most see him from here," exclaimed the youthful messenger, with a dollar's worth of zest. The woman took a paper from her purse, and holding it against the post-office window, wrote:

"Van: I'm going over the hill to the light-house. I shall wait for you somewhere on the road until noon; if you do not come then, I will go back to the city on the twelve-twenty train. But you will come. You'll please to bring some bread, the French kind, meat, fruit and something sweetonly not pie. Bring the things I used to like. Van, you will come? I cannot write. I have dreamed of this day with you and the sea for so long."

There was no signature; perhaps she thought the curious writing was enough; perhaps she knew no other woman would write to him thus.

"Lo these many years I have kept my soul within this 'earthly tabernacle' by my ability to write, and now behold what manner of an epistle an authoress writes, when she petitions that the gates of Paradise swing back for her for a little space," she murmured, as she glanced over the letter.

She laughed like an uncertain child as she gave the envelope to the boy,

and asked: "Was Miss Gray's father badly hurt?" "Yep. He died." "She cares for the light all alone?" "Yep; pa says she's a clipper." "No one helps her?" she persisted. "Only Stone; he tinkers up the light a bit now and then. They say- "Here

is your dollar," she suggested, coldly. The last remnant of gray fog lifted from the hills, and a flock of sheep feeding below seemed but a more leisurely vapor lingering in the hollow of the hills. Softened by distance, the booming of the waves against the cliffs, the echoing whistle of the buoy, and the ringing of the sheep bells were the music which satisfied the woman after years of longing. In her gown of soft, dark green the woman stood among the tall, salt grass and gathered cream white flowers. Coming to the crest of the hill the man found her so.

He had walked fast as if he feared some change of resolve would overtake and turn him back. He stopped short, and they surveyed each other with the common curiosity of all persons, who involuntarily strive to read the record which the years have left upon another's face. He took off his wide hat and the sea wind blew back the mass of his boyishly growing fair hair. On his face the White Plague had written the first strokes of his fate. The bitterness of battle had marked about his eyes. The woman looked and knew, and because she was a woman, nothing but love was revealed by her face. Looking into her eyes, he forgot the loneliness and longing she had brought into his life: he knew only the call of her being to his, and thereafter he did not allow himself to wonder or to reason at her conduct. Even as the last vestige of his will turned wax beneath her power she raised her arms and showered the flowers, which she had gathered, over his head and shoulders.

"We have flowers to gather, to trample, and to waste to-day," she cried.

Perhaps because she could not meet his eyes, she caught his arm, and peer

ing childlike into the basket, exclaimed: "What did you bring? It was a heartless thing to forbid you a pie, but, Sir, had you disobeyed, yours would have been the hand to have cast it into the deep."

"One may eat pie any day, but the days when all one's food turns ambrosia are very few indeed," he answered slowly. Then he passed his free arm about her and they went down the old path to the cliff.

All day they strolled along the bluff or sat on the sand at the water's edge. She wove crowns of spring flowers and made him wear them each in turn, which, being a man, he rebelled at, at first. She sang strange songs, forgotten lullabies, for the most part. As she gathered driftwood for their camp fire she dreamed fanciful stories of the wrecked homes from which each piece had come. To her the gulls were the embodied souls of children lost at sea, who ever sought the land and were ever drawn back by the ocean's voice. Her fancy changing, she mocked the grave birds as they sat in solemn conclave on the ruins of the pier, and found in each some likeness to the staid members of the Quaker meeting where she had sat as a child.

They spoke of the girl who kept the light-house, and he told her of the old man's death and the girl's lonely life. After this she sat silent, gazing at the far-off water for many minutes, and then she asked: "You think they will not take the place from her? You think she will live there for many years to come?" He told her wonderingly that he thought she would.

"I loved Lucy Gray when I was here," she continued. here," she continued. "God makes all women mothers; the world spoils them. It has not spoilt her. Think how she would love a child. Had I a child, I could not care for, I would want her to have it. Do you not think so? Tell me you think so!" She 'begged with a strange pleading in her voice and a strange pain in her eyes. The sun was near the hills, and all

day they had dreamed and laughed, and said no word of why she had come or of the days before she went away, or yet of the thing that was writ in the life blood of his face. He went to a fisherman's cabin and rented a boat to take her back to the town. As he rowed he told her of his life while she had been away. When he spoke of his trips to Alaska, she knew how it was that illness had fastened upon him. "The papers reported that you were going back, that the government was sending you to report upon the new gold fields. The article said you would be gone for years," she said, quietly.

He started at her words, and said with dreadful bitterness: "I did not know that you knew that. Yes, I am going; it is a long work but I shall not be gone years."

She shuddered at the meaning of his words. After a silence, he told her fully of the work and of his plans, and in a woman's way she learned of the dangers and the hardships of the undertaking. When she knew it all, the force of her suffering broke its bonds. "Do you think I do not know what you are doing?" she cried. "Do you think I have not seen how you have fought, and dreaded the long end-the days of uselessness and helplessness? This is the way you seek to avoid them. You are not a weak enough man to throw yourself from the pier. You are a brave coward. You would go and endure the hardships and the dangers and you would succeed where many men would fail. You would die and the world would talk of the money and the name you had made. The money, the paltry, vile money, and what would the name be to me then? What, what would anything be then?" Spent by her misery she sat with clenched hands before her face.

"But they say it will be years if I stay here. They say with years of coddling I might even be a man again. Do you think I can bear years of this? Why should I strive for years in a one-sided fight? What have I before

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me that I should care so much to live?" he demanded.

"You shall not go;" she caught his hands upon the oars and forgot all else. "I will stay with you and then you will not go."

His eyes lightened, and for a moment he had a glimpse of all he desired, and then because he was the kind of a man she could love, the light died, and he said slowly: "You shall not stay now. I was a man when you were my wife, and you shall remember me as such, not as a fretful, coughing child. You saw fit to leave me when I was a man-why should you come back to a wreck?"

"Could I come back to that wreck, I'd ask no more of any life," was her reply.

was any

"When you first came," the man continued, "before there doubt or misunderstanding, we said we would never question, but that our trust would be as great as our love, but we are human. I have doubted you, the time when you must explain has come. We cannot go picnicking and gathering flowers all through life. There is a reckoning at the end of every day of joy. We have reached it." He was no more the carefree boy; there was a sternness on his face which was near to cruelty, but which was born of love.

Amazement had gathered in her face as he spoke. Now she faltered: "You do not know why I went? The papers told it all. The whole country knew." She groped on through the misunderstanding which surrounded them. "You did not read about my father?"

"I sailed for Alaska the day after you left. I could not delay then, even for you. Your conduct gave me no reason to believe you cared to have me stay. During the winter I moved heaven and earth to get mail, hoping that you might explain, but the papers that should have come to our station during 1890 were lost."

"They say, 'all the world loves a lover,' but all the world seems to have conspired against us," she said drear