For the whole of a golden day they chartered a sailboat from one, Capt.  Warren, and rounding the yellow headlands under his lazy guidance, they went to examine the Ning Po, the ancient Chinese barge stranded, no one knew how many hundreds of years before, among the rocks off the isthmus.

“Fascinating old place,” observed Blair gazing, his eyes aglow with interest, around the mediaeval cabin.  “Don’t doubt a dozen murders at least were pulled off in this one room!”

“Oh yes, of course,” eagerly echoed his assistant.  “It’s absolutely unique!”

Her gaze, as bright with interest as his own, rested upon Blair himself.  She was considering, absent-mindedly, how becoming white trousers can be to most men, especially when they are reasonably dark themselves.  But, — her glance travelled upward, — how unusually dark he was, and his hair, - yes, without question, the straightest and blackest she had ever seen.  Yet it seemed in some indefinable way to become him, — to belong, as it were, to his type.  Leaning her elbows meditatively upon the rusty anchor, her chin in her hands, she silently appraised him.  He really was a handsome man, she decided, and clever, too, of the sort who does things in the world!  A dreamy light grew within her eyes.

It was only two or three evenings later when, on their way back from the site of an historic Indian village on the other side of the island, they walked their horses slowly around the Wishbone Loop, the ostensible reason being that, as Blair had already discovered, it commanded the widest view of the ocean at sunset.

He was the first to speak when they struck again into the main trail.

“I wished for something about a rose, a wild rose, — want to guess?” He eyed her mischievously.

“Hush, — mustn’t tell!” she laughed.  “Your wish won’t come true if you tell.”  Then, for no reason at all, she blushed.

Never, in truth, during her twenty-three years of working, and scrimping, and going without, had life shown to the little art teacher so fair and generous a side, seemed so extravagantly joyous an affair as during that magic week.  The spending of money, it was easy to see, meant little or nothing to Blair.  But that was the least of his attractions, for, to the girl herself, mere wealth for its own sake had never appealed.  The charm lay rather in the genial broadness of his view of things, the strength of reasoning behind the few opinions he put forward, his reticence, and quiet modesty.  In these dwelt the spell that swept her into an almost delirious enjoyment of his society.  For, all unknown to herself, like many another woman in like condition, she had needed a change of people.  In the cramped life of a private school men played but little part, and the men who were most worth while, almost no part at all.  Instinctively, in time, she had wearied of little girls and their lessons.  Sorely had she craved the stimulus which only the companionship of congenial men can give.  Of this fact, however, she had been even less aware.