Not Like Other Girls

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

“If he would only speak and end all this suspense!” thought Nan, who knew nothing of the real state of things, and imagined that Mr. Drummond had cared for Phillis from the first.

They had already commenced their packing. Sir Harry was back in his hotel, solacing himself with his cousin’s company, and writing brief letters to his homely little bride-elect, when one fine afternoon he met them and Grace just starting for the shore.

This was their programme on most afternoons, and of course they had not gone far before Captain Middleton and his father and sister joined them; and a little later on, just as they were entering the town, they overtook Mr. Drummond.

Phillis nodded to him in a friendly manner, and then walked on with Grace, taking no further notice; but when they were on the shore, admiring the fine sunset effect, Grace quietly dropped her arm and slipped away to join the others. Phillis stood motionless: her eyes were riveted on the grand expanse of sky and ocean. “It is so like life,” she said at last, not seeing who stood beside her, while all the others were walking on in groups of twos and threes, Dulce close to the colonel, as usual. “Do you see those little boats, Grace? one is sailing so smoothly in the sunlight, and the other scarcely stirring in the shadow,—brightness to some, you see, and shade to others; and beyond, that clear line of light, like the promise of eternity.”

“Don’t you think it lies within most people’s power to make their own lives happier?” returned Archie so quietly to this that she scarcely started. “The sunshine and shade are more evenly balanced than we know. To be sure, there are some lives like that day that is neither clear nor dark,—gray, monotonous lives, with few breaks and pleasures in them. But perhaps even that question may be happily solved when one looks out a little farther to the light beyond.”

“Yes, if one does not grow tired of waiting for the answer,” she said, a little dreamily. “There is so much that cannot be clear here.” And then she roused with a little difficulty from her abstraction, and looked around her. The others had all gone on: they were standing alone on the shingly beach, just above a little strip of yellow sand,—only they two. Was it for this reason that her eyes grew wide and troubled, and she moved away rather hurriedly? But he still kept close to her, talking quietly as he did so.

“Do you remember this place?” he said: “it reminds me of a picture I once saw. I think it was ‘Atalanta’s Race,’ only there was no Paris. It was just such as scene as this: there was the dark breakwater, and the long line of surf breaking on the shore, and the sun was shining on the water; and there was a girl running with her head erect, and she scarcely seemed to touch the ground, and she stopped just here,” resting his hand on the black, shiny timber. 367

“Do not,” she answered, in a low voice, “do not recall that day: it stings me even now to remember it.” And as the words “Bravo Atalanta!” recurred to her memory, the hot blush of shame mounted to her face.

“I have no need to recall it,” he returned, still more quietly, for her discomposure was great, “for I have never forgotten it. Yes, this is the place, not where I first saw you, but where I first began to know you. Phillis, that knowledge is becoming everything to me now!”

“Do not,” she said, again, but she could hardly bring out the words. But how wonderful it was to hear her name pronounced like that! “The others have gone on: we must join them.”