"But can't you see, dear friend, that the women of my parish need you, too? The church can turn out deaconesses by the dozens as to 'bones,' but it can't make 'spirit.' Come to us in Sudbury. We need you now; these country people can wait. Why, I need you!"
She looked up, surprised. There had been no word of personality between them, if the ever-recurring personality that emanates between two strong natures which come together with inexplicable interest can be eliminated.
"I have written to-day to Mrs. Dorrs-Flathers, the 'fairy godmother' of our parish," he continued. "It was her wish to create a deaconess at St. Stephen's. Now I am ready to carry out her wish to the very letter. I have written at length, trying to impart to her 'Theodora Hart,' and what a remarkable person I think her. You do not object? I have not trespassed too far, have I, in sharing with my kindest Sudbury friend the knowledge of this new friendship which I have found at Lake Squam?"
She waited a moment, and then: "You must not call this a 'friendship.' We have not proved ourselves already to be worthy of that relation. It is a 'faithship' rather; a great faith in each other. For my part, it has been a high privilege to meet you and to know your work and ambitions. I shall be a better and stronger woman for these three days."
She was about to go on, but the bishop-elect interrupted:
"You must not become a deaconess at St. Stephen's if you think of me as wonderful. I like to have you hug to your heart the delusion, but it would soon be dissipated were you to see me daily in my work. But, seriously, you will think of coming? Say you will consider it during these summer weeks. You can't live in the mountains all winter!"
"Let us talk about Chocorua, and forget everything but the mountains and the sunset. Look quick! See! Isn't that a marvellous benediction resting upon the stern old head of my mountain? Don't you love Chocorua?"
"Yes, I love Chocorua, and I agree with John March in other things, too."
"Why, what do you and Cousin John like together besides the dear old mountain? I'm interested!"
As they had wandered on in conversation, so, too, they had left the seats by the sumac bushes, and were lingering near a dilapidated rail fence. This served the deaconess presently as a comfortable chair, while the rector of St. Stephen's flung himself, with hands behind his head, upon a stray haycock, which seemed to have left the companionship of twenty others upon the hillside just to perform the kindly office of couch to the bishop-elect.
The man evaded the question and went back to her own proposition.
"Yes, we'll forget everything else,—except the mountain and the bishop-elect and the deaconess. I am at the feet of the mountain, and at your feet, too. What shall we talk about?"
The girl did not answer. She was lost in the ecstasy of the moment. Feeling, intense and insistent, tingled in her veins—not recognized as a great human hunger for continual companionship. She apprehended the feeling only as a part of the day's glorification born of a man's inspiration.
But he, he knew, man fashion; and he watched the color come and go upon her face as eagerly as she watched the shifting rays of the sun as they threw shafts of light across the brow of Chocorua.
The rector of St. Stephen's was the first to speak; and he spoke as if he were thinking aloud, rather than opening a new opportunity for conversation. "You are such an optimist! Yes, and something better, too, because you find truth in your ideals. You make me think of Dr. Arnold. One of the boys once said: 'We mustn't lie to Arnold. He'd believe us!'"
She looked down and smiled at the man who was thus pleasantly dissecting her.
"Do you know," he continued, "I think I never met such a woman before. But then, for that matter, no woman has come into my life for years as you have in these three days. I am not myself, either. I feel strangely young, strangely happy, independent." After a few minutes of glad silence he went on: "But think! if you do come to St. Stephen's we can't talk like this together, or watch sunsets. There will be no Lake Squam at our feet, dotted over
