"Why?" said she. "Did you not drink to our return?"

"But you would not drink with me, so the spell did not work; and now the
spring is gone,--all its beauty, I mean. The water is there, in a tank,
where the Chinamen fill their buckets night and morning, and the teamsters
water their horses. We'll go over there, if you would like to see the march
of modern improvements."

"No," she said; "I had rather remember it as it was; still, I don't believe
in being sentimental about such things. Let us sit down a while."

A vague depression, which Arnold had been aware of in her manner when they
met, became suddenly manifest in her paleness and in a look of dull pain in
her eyes.

"But you are hurt about it," he said. "I wish I hadn't told you in that
brutal way. I'm afraid I'm not many degrees removed from the primeval
savage, after all."

"Oh, you needn't mind," she said, after a moment. "That was the only place
I cared for, here, so now there will be nothing to regret when I go away."

"Are you going away, then? I'm very sorry to hear it; but of course I'm
not surprised. You couldn't be expected to stand it another year; those
children must have been something fearful."

"Oh, it wasn't the children."

"Well, I'm sorry. I had hoped"--