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As deep as the sea
by
“Who told you? What brought you, Flood?” the girl asked, her chin in her long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in her lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the Titian hair with splendor.
“Fate brought me, and didn’t tell me,” he answered, with a whimsical quirk of the mouth and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.
“Wouldn’t you have come if you knew I was here?” she urged, archly.
“Not for two thousand dollars,” he answered, the look of trouble deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high, indeed.
“Two thousand dollars–nothing less?” she inquired, gayly. “You are too specific for a real lover.”
“Fate fixed the amount,” he added, dryly.
“Fate–you talk so much of Fate,” she replied, gravely, and her eyes looked into the distance. “You make me think of it, too, and I don’t want to do so. I don’t want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and Destiny.”
“Oh, you get the same thing in the ‘fore-ordination’ that old Minister M’Gregor preaches every Sunday. ‘Be elect or be damned,’ he says to us all. Names aren’t important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t me?” she asked, softly. “Are you sure I wasn’t calling you, and you had to come?”
“Well, it was en route, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must tell you,” he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. “I hear you call me in the night sometimes, and I start up and say ‘Yes, Di!’ out of my sleep. It’s a queer hallucination. I’ve got you on the brain, certainly.”
“It seems to vex you–certainly,” she said, opening the book that lay in her lap, “and your eyes trouble me to-day. They’ve got a look that used to be in them, Flood, before–before you promised; and another look I don’t understand and don’t like. I suppose it’s always so. The real business of life is trying to understand each other.”
“You have wonderful thoughts for one that’s had so little chance,” he said. “That’s because you’re a genius, I suppose. Teaching can’t give that sort of thing–the insight.”
“What is the matter, Flood?” she asked, suddenly, again, her breast heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. “I heard a man say once that you were ‘as deep as the sea.’ He did not mean it kindly, but I do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were you going when you came across me here?”
“To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there,” he answered, nodding toward a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them.
“Old Busby!” she rejoined, in amazement. “What do you want with him–not medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?”
“He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than they’ll ever pay him.”
“Is he as rich an old miser as they say?”
“He doesn’t look rich, does he?” was the enigmatical answer.
“Does any one know his real history? He didn’t come from nowhere. He must have had friends once. Some one must once have cared for him, though he seems such a monster now.”
“Yet he cures people sometimes,” he rejoined, abstractedly. “Probably there’s some good underneath. I’m going to try and see.”
“What is it? What is your business with him? Won’t you tell me? Is it so secret?”
“I want him to help me in a case I’ve got in hand. A client of mine is in trouble–you mustn’t ask about it; and he can help, I think–I think so.” He got to his feet. “I must be going, Di,” he added. Suddenly a flush swept over his face, and he reached out and took both her hands. “Oh, you are a million times too good for me!” he said. “But if all goes well, I’ll do my best to make you forget it.”