"I see," he said sympathetically. And back into his memory flashed
that scene with her by the stove in the dusky bar. And then he
remembered her as she stood in her red hood and cloak staring at the
closed door of the room where her dead father lay. And he remembered
touching her frosty little hand, and the incident of the watch.

"I never went back there," he mused, half to himself, looking
curiously at the girl before him. "I wanted to go--but I never did."

"No, you never came back," she said slowly.

"I couldn't. I was only a kid, you see. My mother wouldn't let me go
there that summer. And father and I joined a club down South so we did
not go back for the duck-shooting. That is how it happened."

She nodded, gravely, but said nothing to him about her faith in his
return, how confidently, how patiently she had waited through that
long, long summer for the boy who never returned.

"I did think of you often," he volunteered, smiling at her.

"I thought of you, too. I hoped you would come and let me teach you to
sail a boat."

"That's so! I remember now. You were going to show me how."

"Have you learned to sail a boat?"

"No. I'll tell you what I'll do, Athalie, I'll come down this
summer--"