“He being gone—­poor Clem—­do you think—?  Have you thought, I mean?  Has it made a difference, Chris?  ’T is so hard to put it into words without sounding brutal and callous.  Only men are selfish when they love.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

A sudden inspiration prompted his reply.  He said nothing for a moment, but with a hand that shook somewhat, drew forth his pocketbook, opened it, fumbled within, and then handed over to Chris the brown ruins of flowers long dead.

“You picked them,” he said slowly; “you picked them long ago and flung them away from you when you said ‘No’ to me—­said it so kindly in the past.  Take them in your hand again.”

“Dead bluebells,” she answered.  “Ess, I can call home the time.  To think you gathered them up!” She looked at him with something not unlike love in her eyes and fingered the flowers gently.  “You’m a gude man, Martin —­the husband for a gude lass.  Best to find one if you can.  Wish I could help’e.”

“Oh, Chris, there’s only one woman in the world for me.  Could you—­even now?  Could you let me stand between you and the world?  Could you, Chris?  If you only knew what I cannot put into words.  I’d try so hard to make you happy.”

“I knaw, I knaw.  But theer’s no human life so long as the road to happiness, Martin.  And yet—­”

He took her hand and for a moment she did not resist him.  Then little Tim’s voice chimed out merrily at the stream margin, and the music had instant effect upon Chris Blanchard.

She drew her hand from Martin and the next moment he saw his dead bluebells hurrying away and parting company for ever on the dancing water.  Chris watched them until they vanished; then she turned and looked at him, to find that he grew very pale and agitated.  Even his humility had hardly foreseen this decisive answer after the yielding attitude Chris first assumed when she suffered him to hold her hand.  He looked into her face inquiring and frightened.  The silence that followed was broken by continued laughter and shouting from Timothy.  Then Martin tried to connect the child’s first merriment with the simultaneous change in the mood of the woman he worshipped, but failed to do so.

At that moment Chris spoke.  She made utterance under the weight of great emotion and with evident desire to escape the necessity of a direct negative, while yet leaving her refusal of Martin’s offer implicit and distinct.

“I mind when a scatter of paper twinkled down this river just like them dead blossoms.  Clem thrawed them, an’ they floated away to the sea, past daffadowndillies an’ budding lady-ferns an’ such-like.  ’T was a li’l bit of poetry he’d made up to please me—­and I, fule as I was, didn’t say the right thing when he axed me what I thought; so Clem tore the rhymes in pieces an’ sent them away.  He said the river would onderstand.  An’ the river onderstands why I dropped them dead blossoms in, tu.  A wise, ancient stream, I doubt.  An’ you ‘m wise, tu; an’ can take my answer wi’out any more words, as will awnly make both our hearts ache.”