Ruth had been with Annie for five days now; the original three days for which she had said she could come had been lengthened to a week, and she knew that she would not want to go even then. For here was rest. Here she could forget about herself as set apart from others. Here she did not seem apart. After the stress of those days at home it was good to rest in this simple feeling of being just one with others. It was good to lie on the grass under the trees, troubled thoughts in abeyance, and feel spring in the earth, take it in by smell and sound. It was wonderfully good to play with the children, to lie on the grass and let the little two year old girl—Annie's baby—pull at her hair, toddling around her, cooing and crowing. There was healing in that. It was good to be some place where she did not seem to cause embarrassment, to be where she was wanted. After the strain of recent events the simple things of these days were very sweet to her. It had become monstrous always to have to feel that something about her made her different from other people. There was something terrible in it—something not good for one. Here was release from that.

And it was good to be with Annie; they had not talked much yet—not seriously talked. Annie seemed to know that it was rest in little things Ruth needed now, not talk of big ones. They talked about the chickens and the cows, the flowers and the cauliflowers, about the children's pranks. It was restoring to talk thus of inconsequential things; Ruth was beginning to feel more herself than she had felt in years. On that fifth day her step was lighter than when she came; it was easier to laugh. Hers had once been so sunny a nature; it was amazingly easy to break out of the moroseness with which circumstances had clouded her into that native sunniness. That afternoon she sat on the knoll above the house, leaning back against a tree and smiling lazily at the gamboling of the new little pigs.

Annie was directing the boy who had been helping her cut asparagus to carry the baskets up where Ruth was sitting. "I'm going to talk to you while I make this into bunches, Ruth," she called.

"I'll help," Ruth called back with zest.

They talked at first of the idiosyncrasies of asparagus beds, of the marketing of it; then something Annie said set Ruth thinking of something that had happened when they were in high school. "Oh, do you remember, Annie—" she laughingly began. There was that sort of talk for awhile—"Do you remember...?" and "Oh, whatever became of...?"

As they worked on Ruth thought of the strangeness of her being there with this girl who, when they were in school together, had meant so little to her. Her own work lagged, watching Annie as with quick, sure motions she made the asparagus into bunches for market. She did things deftly and somehow gave the feeling of subordinating them to something else, of not letting them take all of her. Ruth watched her with affectionate interest; she wore an all-over gingham apron, her big sun hat pushed back from her browned, thin face; she was not at all attractive unless one saw the eager, living eyes—keenly intelligent eyes. Ruth thought of her other friends—the girls who had been her friends when she was in school and whom she had not seen now; she wondered why it was Annie had none of the feeling that kept those other girls away.

Annie's husband was a slow, stolid man; Ruth supposed that in his youth, when Annie married him, he had perhaps been attractive in his stalwartness. He was sluggish now; good humored enough, but apparently as heavy in spirit as in body. Things outside the material round of life—working, eating, sleeping—simply did not seem to exist for him. At first she wondered how Annie could be content with life with him, Annie, who herself was so keenly alive. Thinking of it now it seemed Annie had the same adjustment to him that she had to the asparagus,—something subordinated, not taking up very much of herself. She had about Annie, and she did not know just why she had it, the feeling that here was a person who could not be very greatly harmed, could not be completely absorbed by routine, could not, for some reason she could not have given, be utterly vanquished by any circumstance. She went about her work as if that were one thing—and then there were other things; as if she were in no danger of being swallowed up in her manner of living. There was something apart that was dauntless. Ruth wondered about her, she wanted to find out about her. She wanted for herself that valiant spirit, a certain unconquerableness she felt in Annie.

Annie broke a pause to say: "You can't know, Ruth, how much it means to have you here."

Ruth's face lighted and she smiled; she started to speak, but instead only smiled again. She wanted to tell what it meant to her to be there, but that seemed a thing not easily told.

"I wish you could stay longer," Annie went on, all the while working. "So—" she paused, and continued a little diffidently—"so we could really get acquainted; really talk. I hardly ever have anyone to talk to," she said wistfully. "One gets pretty lonely sometimes. It would be good to have someone to talk to about the things one thinks."

"What are the things you think, Annie?" Ruth asked impulsively.

"Oh, no mighty thoughts," laughed Annie; "but of course I'm always thinking about things. We keep alive by thinking, don't we?"

Ruth gave her a startled look.

"Perhaps it's because I haven't had from life itself much of what I'd like to have," Annie was going on, "that I've made a world within. Can't let life cheat us, Ruth," she said brightly. "If we can't have things in one way—have to get them in another."

Again Ruth looked at her in that startled way. Annie did not see it, reaching over for more asparagus; she was all the time working along in that quick, sure way—doing what she was doing cleverly and as if it weren't very important. "Perhaps, Ruth," she said after a minute, "that that's why my school-girl fancy for you persisted—deepened—the way it has." She hesitated, then said simply: "I liked you for not letting life cheat you."

She looked up with a quick little nod as she said that but found Ruth's face very serious, troubled. "But I don't think I've done what you mean, Annie," she began uncertainly. "I did what I did—because I had to. And I'm afraid I haven't—gone on. It begins to seem to me now that I've stayed in a pretty small place. I've been afraid!" she concluded with sudden scorn.

"That isn't much wonder," Annie murmured gently.

"But with me," she took it up after a little, "I've had to go on." Her voice went hard in saying it. "Things would have just shut right down on me if I would have let them," she finished grimly.

"I married for passion," she began quietly after a minute. "Most people do, I presume. At least most people who marry young."

Ruth colored. She was not used to saying things right out like that.

"Romantic love is a wonderful thing," Annie pursued; "I suppose it's the most beautiful thing in the world—while it lasts." She laughed in a queer, grim little way and gave a sharp twist to the knot she was tying. "Sometimes it opens up to another sort of love—love of another quality—and to companionship. It must be a beautiful thing—when it does that." She hesitated a moment before she finished with a dryness that had that grim quality: "With me—it didn't.

"So there came a time," she went on, and seemed newly to have gained serenity, "when I saw that I had to give up—go under—or get through myself what I wasn't going to get through anyone else. Oh, it's not the beautiful way—not the complete way. But it's one way!" she flashed in fighting voice. "I fought for something, Ruth. I held it. I don't know that I've a name for it—but it's the most precious thing in life. My life itself is pretty limited; aside from the children"—she softened in speaking of them—"my life is—pretty barren. And as for the children"—that fighting spirit broke sharply through, "they're all the more reason for not sinking into things—not sinking into them," she laughed.

As she stopped there Ruth asked eagerly, eyes intently upon her: "But just what is it you mean, Annie? Just what is it you fought for—kept?"

"To be my own!" Annie flashed back at her, like steel.

Then she changed; for the first time her work fell unheeded in her lap; the eyes which a minute before had flashed fight looked far off and were dreamy; her face, over which the skin seemed to have become stretched, burned by years of sun and wind, quivered a little. When she spoke again it was firmly but with sadness. "It's what we think that counts, Ruth. It's what we feel. It's what we are. Oh, I'd like richer living—more beauty—more joy. Well, I haven't those things. For various reasons, I won't have them. That makes it the more important to have all I can take!"—it leaped out from the gentler thinking like a sent arrow. "Nobody holds my thoughts. They travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. They bring me whatever they can bring me—and I shut nothing out. I'm not afraid!"

Ruth was looking at her with passionate earnestness.

"Over there in that town,"—Annie made a little gesture toward it, "are hundreds of women who would say they have a great deal more than I have. And it's true enough," she laughed, "that they have some things I'd like to have. But do you think I'd trade with them? Oh, no! Not much! The free don't trade with the bond, Ruth."

And still Ruth did not speak, but listened with that passionate intentness.

"There in that town," Annie went on, "are people—most a whole townful of them—who are going through life without being really awake to life at all. They move around in a closed place, doing the same silly little things—copy-cats—repeaters. They're not their own—they're not awake. They're like things run by machinery. Like things going in their sleep. Take those girls we used to go to school with. Why, take Edith Lawrence. I see her sometimes. She always speaks sweetly to me; she means to be nice. But she moves round and round in her little place and she doesn't even know of the wonderful things going on in the world today! Do you think I'd trade with her?—social leader and all the rest of it!" She was gathering together the bundles of asparagus. She had finished her work. "Very sweet—very charming," she disposed of Edith, "but she simply doesn't count. The world's moving away from her, and she,"—Annie laughed with a mild scorn—"doesn't even know that!"