Felipa’s foot was well again, and spring had come.  Soon we must leave our lodge on the edge of the pine barren, our outlook over the salt marsh, our river sweeping up twice a day, bringing in the briny odors of the ocean:  soon we should see no more the eagles far above us or hear the night-cry of the great owls, and we must go without the little fairy flowers of the barren, so small that a hundred of them scarcely made a tangible bouquet, yet what beauty! what sweetness!  In my portfolio were sketches and studies of the barrens, and in my heart were hopes.  Somebody says somewhere, “Hope is more than a blessing:  it is a duty and a virtue.”  But I fail to appreciate preserved hope—­hope put up in cans and served out in seasons of depression.  I like it fresh from the tree.  And so when I hope it is hope, and not that well-dried, monotonous cheerfulness which makes one long to throw the persistent smilers out of the window.  Felipa danced no more on the barrens; her illness had toned her excitable nature; she seemed content to sit at our feet while we talked, looking up dreamily into our faces, but no longer eagerly endeavoring to comprehend.  We were there:  that was enough.

“She is growing like a reed,” I said:  “her illness has left her weak.”

“-Minded,” suggested Christine, smiling.

At this moment Felipa stroked the lady’s white hand tenderly and laid her brown cheek against it.

“Do you not feel reproached,” I said.

“Why?  Must we give our love to whoever loves us?  A fine parcel of paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small change!  Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour’s happiness, or shall I make one soul rich his whole life long?”

“The latter,” remarked Edward, who had come up unobserved.

They gazed at each other unflinchingly.  They had come to open battle during those last days, and I knew that the end was near.  Their words had been cold as ice, cutting as steel, and I said to myself, “At any moment.”  There would be a deadly struggle, and then Christine would yield.  Even I comprehended something of what that yielding would be.  There are beautiful velvety panthers in the Asian forests, and in real life too, sometimes.

“Why do they hate each other so?” Felipa said to me sadly.

“Do they hate each other?”

“Yes, for I feel it here,” she answered, touching her breast with a dramatic little gesture.

“Nonsense!  Go and play with your doll, child.”  For I had made her a respectable, orderly doll to take the place of the ungainly fetich out on the barren.

Felipa gave me a look and walked away.  A moment afterward she brought the doll out of the house before my very eyes, and, going down to the end of the dock, deliberately threw it into the water:  the tide was flowing out, and away went my toy-woman out of sight, out to sea.

“Well!” I said to myself.  “What next?”