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 either side of the little stream was wet and marshy. He would cut a sorry figure indeed as he went floundering up to his ankles in water. But to turn back was not to be thought of; better to perish, to drown miserably before her eyes, than to retrace his steps and virtually confess that he had been spying on her. He went heroically on. Bistre heroically followed.

And then, at the last moment, with one foot squishing down into a clump of forget-me-nots, he turned and stole a glance at the girl—and knew he was saved! Her back was toward him, but something—perhaps the half-hearted way in which she dabbed a brush onto a region of the palette where there was no paint, perhaps the strained set of her bent head—told him that she was not so indifferent to his fate as she would have it appear;