1

The Rev. Needham awoke from his siesta wonderfully refreshed. These benign afternoon snoozes had a peculiar and sometimes quite poignant effect. The minister dimly felt it must have something to do with psychology. For he always awoke feeling so spiritual, so calm and strong. Today, of course, there was particularly traceable cause: he had gone to sleep, one must remember, in a miraculously resolute, yes, a truly masterful, mood. Did we call it Nietzschean? Well, perhaps it really was almost that. At any rate, waking was delicious. There was a largeness, a breadth about life which made one want to square one's shoulders, step out proudly. Before the dresser mirror, in the act of resuming collar and tie, the Rev. Needham actually did square his shoulders a little. He even threw out his chest somewhat. Oh, it is sweet to be master of one's own destiny!

Out on the porch he found his wife, rocking there all by herself and looking a little vacantly off at the shrubs and trees.

"Ah, Anna," he said; then perched himself in a nonchalant, really an almost rakish manner, on the railing, throwing one leg over the other, and folding his arms. He yawned a little audibly, concluding that function with a kind of masterful, contented smacking of the lips—even whistled a few bars of a gay secular tune.

"Did you sleep well, Alf?" Anna Needham spoke calmly, rocked calmly. She still eyed the shrubs and trees in a spirit of almost hypnotized calm.

"I had a magnificent nap," he assured her.

Anna rocked more slowly. "Alf," she hesitated.

"Yes, Anna?"

"Alf, I wonder if I can be getting old ...?"

"Old, Anna?" He was really quite shocked at the suggestion.

"Yes—I don't know. Sometimes...."

"Nonsense!"

"I don't know ..." she continued dreamily.

"But why should you ever think such a thing?"

"Well, lately there've been times when I've felt so kind of still. I don't know, but I thought—I thought it might be...."

"Why, Anna ...!" he cried in vaguely frightened tones.

"I don't know, Alf." Her manner retained its essential dreaminess. "Sometimes when I sit alone rocking, I feel so kind of still...."

The minister laughed, then, with even an attempt at something like boisterousness; but it was plain something of his earlier flamboyancy had vanished. Abruptly, right in the heyday of his most glorious mood, the shortness of life struck him with uncanny force. Life's shortness, and, though he indignantly repudiated the insinuation, its relative futility, after all. Where had one come from in the beginning; just what was it one was up to now; and where was it one would go when the breath of life ceased flowing? Oh, what a piece of work is man! These were the secret inner workings. With a thrill of genuine horror the minister found himself asking what he knew, as a fact, after all these years of preaching it, about the immortality of the soul. It was terrible, terrible! Oh, that he should be afflicted with such doubts! And not ten minutes ago the Rev. Needham had squared his shoulders and flashed so grand a defiance at his own reflection....

Curiously enough, this sudden unpleasant sense of renewed insecurity was augmented, at the moment when it was most acute, by the rippling laughter of his approaching sister-in-law. Miss Whitcom and her friend were returning from their tÊte-À-tÊte in the bower. The laugh, whatever it might mean to the minister, signified that the lady was not, so easily, to be carried off her feet, and that, however thrillingly she might talk about not being a pioneer any longer, no mere travelling man was to capture her without at least a concluding scramble.

Barrett O'Donnell knew quite well what the laugh signified. But it didn't, for all that, very greatly disturb him. Lord, he'd waited twenty years: he could wait twenty more, if necessary. There is not that hot impetuosity in the affection of souls matured which characterizes youth; not that fever, that restless, exquisite rush of heady devotion. Still, there is perhaps something in being quite sure your love isn't misplaced. Yes, in a way, to be sure may be even better than to possess.

The return of Miss Whitcom and Mr. O'Donnell from one direction fell simultaneously with the return of Louise and Lynndal Barry from another. The porch became a very lively place, all at once, where a few moments before it had been so quiet, with only the minister's wife there, rocking.... Louise was greatly relieved that it should be so. To have returned to a silent and deserted house after what had passed between herself and Lynndal on the beach must have proved next to unbearable. As it was, the frantic difficulty of the situation would be lightened, if only temporarily.

Marjory pounced at once upon the westerner, turning from her ancient suitor with a careless alacrity which seemed saying: "After all, I am free, quite superbly free!" And O'Donnell muttered an "Ah!" scarce audibly; and what he meant by it was this: "I know you'll come back to me. You always have and you always will. We are not quite free, either of us, in one sense of the word." One glorious, indomitable sense of the word.

Marjory wanted to know more about the dam in Arizona, and especially she wanted to get at the other side of this tragic love affair—this bit of high tragedy in humble setting. In art, she thought, tragedy has a way of being generally treated nobly and loftily; but in life, somehow, it often seems almost absurd. Yes, first it was the dam. But she did not really care two straws about the dam. She had got beyond all such things as dams in her pilgrimage.

The Rev. Needham opened up a conversation about the Point with O'Donnell. But he kept eyeing his daughter, who leaned against the railing of the porch, her hands clasped before her. Alfred, despite his calling, was a wretched reader of souls. The look in one's eyes or the line of one's lips meant next to nothing, definitely—if only because these things might mean so bafflingly much.... If you actually shed tears, then he would be reasonably sure you must be unhappy. Hearty laughter signified, of course, a state of hilarity. However, the Rev. Needham's spirit, with Milton's, took, really, no middle course. There lay an almost blank chasm between tears and laughter—although, alas, the fact of its being a chasm did not make it any less conducive to prickles in one's suspended heels.

"There's only one thing," O'Donnell was observing, "—only one thing I've got against this place."

"What's that?" asked the minister.

"There are so many signs!"

It took the Rev. Needham just a moment to comprehend what was meant. "You mean the Assembly notices?"

"I suppose that's what they are. If you'll pardon my saying so, it seems sometimes as though there's a sign on every tree. One says you mustn't peel the birch bark, and the next one announces a lecture on such and such a day."

"I'm afraid they have multiplied the last few seasons," admitted the minister. "We don't seem to notice—so used to them, I suppose. There are picnickers, you know—come from other parts—and we have to look out for the natural beauty or it will be all spoiled. As for the lecture announcements," he concluded, "the—the church, you know, has to keep pace, nowadays. Yes, it—it has to advertise a little!" He spoke almost glibly, and sighed; but quite brightly, indeed almost chirpily.

Miss Whitcom caught the confession. And she hopped down at once off Mr. Barry's fine Arizona dam—which diverted water into a huge reservoir, thus keeping off the Needham wolf—and administered what might vulgarly be termed a knock-out.

"I should say it does have to advertise! Oh, yes, the church must indeed hustle to keep pace! Even so, I hear the attendance is dropping off."

"Marjory?" began her brother-in-law with unhappy and interrogative vehemence. The low bow, alas, would do no good at all here. This woman was unspeakable. She struck him as almost a monster! Not that this was manifest, of course; it was merely the way she struck his invisible soul.

"Oh, gracious, Alfred, I don't mean your attendance. I'm not referring to your particular church. I speak as a sociologist—a biologist!" She laughed. "Yes, I always try to consider these things in the broadest sense. And I don't see why you should look so shocked, for after all I'm only agreeing with you. Don't you see I am? The church does have to advertise. Has to stir up public controversies for the sake of getting itself discussed—always biologically speaking, Alfred. It has to get itself recognized as a social force. That's the word: a social force! It must be a little sensational even, sometimes, to match the growing sensationalism of life. What more natural? An atmosphere of spry colloquialism. Yes, the modern church must compete. Why not introduce the movies into Sunday School—?"

"We haven't yet done any of these things, Marjory," declared the Rev. Needham earnestly, a trifle coolly. He seemed really to insist upon receiving all her shafts personally.

"Some churches do though," volunteered O'Donnell—and laughed a little nervously.

Mrs. Needham had been following the conversation, glancing first at one speaker then at another; now she spoke: "Marjory, how do you ever manage to keep track of everything that's going on here in America?" It was not the first time since her arrival amongst them that Anna's sister had amazed her with a grasp of home affairs—often with flashes of vision which had been closed to her before.

"Oh," replied Marjory with pleasant lightness, "but you see such demonstrations as these exude an influence—it's a little like the wireless. One feels their thrill all around the earth."

"Besides," interposed O'Donnell quite seriously, "you know Tahulamaji's awfully advanced."

"Is it?" asked Mrs. Needham guilelessly, turning towards him.

"Oh, tremendously," he assured her. "As I make it out Queen Tess was one of the most advanced women of her time. I tell you, things move in Tahulamaji!"

Mrs. Needham had not hitherto felt, as she indefinitely put it to herself, very well acquainted with this travelling man friend of her sister's. Suddenly she found herself holding the centre of the stage with him. It amounted to a little thrill.

"I suppose, after all, things aren't so different there—conditions, should I say?"

"Well," hedged O'Donnell, beginning to perceive that he had entered somewhat dangerous waters. He glanced at Miss Whitcom, who merely shrugged her shoulders, which seemed equivalent to an assurance that, having involved himself unnecessarily in her behalf, he might just flounder along, so far as she was concerned, until kingdom come.

"Maybe," suggested the minister's wife with a dart of genuine brilliance, "the churches do all those things in Tahulamaji!" Would it not seem to explain Marjory's being so uncannily well informed?

The Rev. Needham inwardly fidgeted. He felt he ought to be in the forefront of the discussion, defending his cloth. But suddenly he seemed, within, sadly and impotently, to have nothing to say. There were times when he felt he didn't possess a single honest prejudice any more, or hold one single irrefragable opinion. What a fortunate thing for the soul is its kind bulwark of flesh!

Anna's suggestion at length stirred Miss Whitcom, however. "Oh, no," she said quietly, "they don't."

"Still," O'Donnell objected, "you told me the Queen was incorrigibly modern, and you said she adored the movies."

"Oh, we're modern," replied Marjory with an ungodly smirk. "Yes, we're modern enough in Tahulamaji. I may say we're quite in the van of civilization. We're so modern that we haven't any churches. So how could we advertise?"

"No churches, Marjory?" queried her brother-in-law. "But you seem to forget—"

"Well, at least nothing you'd call a church, I'm sure, Alfred—outside of what the foreigners have imported, that is. A few little rude native altars.... That's all. You know, 'when two or three are gathered together'.... It's—well, I've sometimes felt it's the spirit that counts in Tahulamaji, when it comes to matters of religion. Everything's very, very simple. We really haven't time to do it the grand way, even if we knew how."

They hadn't time for church in Tahulamaji! The awful question which now wracked the soul of the minister was: If they hadn't time for church, what had they time for? A dimly terrifying curiosity assailed him. The Rev. Needham had read vague things about the people of the tropics. And a flush overspread his lined, worried face.

Yes, Marjory was an odd sheep, if not a black one. Perhaps she could hardly be called a black one, though there were certainly times when the Rev. Needham saw her as through smoked glasses. Anyway, an odd sheep she certainly was. She did not seem to belong in the herd at all—let alone the family! The rest were all quiet, sensible, orthodox. But about everything Marjory said or did there was something unorthodox, something wickedly theatrical. What a past she had had! Just think of it! Just think, for instance, of spending five whole years of one's life in a place like Tahulamaji! Well, the ways of God were unsearchable. So, it seemed, were the ways of His satanic opponent. The reason she seemed different from themselves must be, fundamentally, that she had had a past. But why had she had a past? Yes, the minister's speculations always must terminate with the knottiest question raised and unanswered. It seemed a part of his destiny.

And meanwhile, there stood Louise and Lynndal, not six feet apart, yet never meeting each other's look; never speaking. How unpremeditated and tragic! He had come all the way from Arizona, and now they had nothing to say to each other. Louise, leaning wretchedly against the railing, seemed, just now, able to realize nothing clearly. The episode on the beach had confused her. She felt herself baffled.

As for Barry's state of mind, that, also, was considerably cloudy. It had happened—the inconceivable, the impossible—and it was now over. Yet was it really over? In just a swift moment like this had all his dreams been broken? It seemed incredible: he could not believe it. He tried to reassure himself, endeavoured to keep hope alight. Something wise and still, deep in his heart, counseled patience. It might be she was only confused: it seemed strange to her, having suddenly a reality like this in place of her dreams. Louise was a dreamer—he knew that. And what might be going on inside her wayward little head, who could guess? So far Barry had only distinguished himself as a wizard of the burning sands. He was a man who could make deserts bloom like the rose. Yet who could say but perhaps he knew a little, too, about the subtler bloom of a woman's heart? Patience, he argued within himself. It might be she was only puzzled, and that she still loved him in spite of the thing that had happened. He would be patient a little while. If it turned out at last that there was no hope, why, then he would go back to the desert again. That was all.

It was nearly five o'clock when Leslie and Hilda emerged from the woods with their supply of roasting sticks. They had gone about their task in the most leisurely fashion, mutually animated by a curious half complacent acceptance of each other's presence. Merely being together had become such a complete yet informal delight that neither of them stopped to analyse it at all. And yet, if their hands chanced to brush, or, as happened once when a bee threatened, she laid her hand a little clutchingly on his shoulder, the emotion quickened. They hadn't much to say to each other, although a good deal of talk, such as it was, passed between them. Neither could remember afterward anything that was said. And all they had intrinsically to show for their afternoon was an armful of roasting sticks.

"Where shall we keep them until it's time?" asked Hilda, as they tramped through the sand and up to the screened porch.

He gazed dreamily off to sea.

"Les?" she repeated, quaintly drawling.

"Hm?"

"What shall we do with the sticks? Leave them here? Or do you want to take them down where the fire's going to be?"

"Oh," he said at last, "I don't care." And he let himself down slowly on to the steps. "I feel so dreamy I can hardly move. Did you ever feel like that, Hilda?"

"Yes, many times," she replied, sitting down one step above him and clasping her knees. Her canvas hat was tossed aside, and the hair on her forehead was a little damp. There ensued a long, drowsy silence. At length she said: "I hope we cut enough, Les."

He was still gazing off across the sea, which the declining sun was making flash in a splendid and quite dazzling way. It was merely a warm, hypnotic stare, and he really saw nothing at all; yet he was faintly conscious of things—above all, he was conscious of a feeling of simple young happiness.

"Les?"

"Hm?"

"You do think we cut enough, don't you?"

"Sure, I guess so."

"It would be so funny," she laughed, "if there didn't happen to be enough to go round and some had to just sit and watch the others eat!"

"Most of them do that anyway, don't they?" he murmured. "I mean they sit there and watch you work like a slave, and then swallow everything that's poked in front of their mouths. I guess all roasts are alike."

"Well, anyhow, we won't feed any of the lazybones tonight, Les. We'll eat our own! I'll feed you, and you feed me. Will you?"

He glanced up at her and smiled. Then he slid down a step and lay back, resting his head against the step on which she sat, a little to one side.

"You look quite different upside down," he volunteered.

"How, Les?"

"Oh—I don't know. Your eyes look so funny!"

"Yours do, too!"

He thrust a sun-browned arm over his eyes and crossed his legs. It was she who now gazed off over the blazing waves. Not exactly a classic tableau. You would never mistake them for Romeo and Juliet. And yet our little ubiquitous friend Eros viewed the picture not without a smouldering, an incipient satisfaction.

Louise came out of the living room door on to the porch. She could see Hilda's head and shoulders, and she crossed over to the screen door at the top of the flight. Hilda looked round quickly.

"Oh, hello, Lou!"

Louise nodded, and made motions of salutation with her lips. There was no sound, however. She cleared her throat—tried to smile.

Leslie drew himself hurriedly into a more dignified posture. "Hello," he smiled, rising a trifle uneasily.

"Just see how many we got!" cried Hilda, jumping up and gathering the roasting sticks in her arms.

Louise stood there looking down through the screen door. "You certainly got enough!" she exclaimed, a little shrilly—the result of her trying so desperately to be perfectly natural.

"Well," Hilda went on, "you see I kept finding little trees so straight we simply couldn't pass them by. And Leslie just kept cutting. See how sharp they are?"

Leslie, as though availing himself of the invitation (regardless of its not having been exactly addressed to him) placed a finger on one of the smoothly whittled points and withdrew it with a small, oddly juvenile howl of mock distress. The wounded finger went into his mouth. Leslie was certainly not at his ease.

Suddenly Hilda ran up close to her sister and asked, in a very low voice: "Have you been crying?"

Louise's heart jumped. "Why, no," she replied.

"It must be the sun in your eyes," said Hilda.

"Yes, it must be." And she turned away from them and sat in the same chair her mother had occupied when she had demanded of Alfred if he thought she might be growing old. Louise rocked slowly, just as her mother had rocked. Yet her thoughts rushed madly to and fro. There was a battle of ghosts in her heart.

Aunt Marjie came out breezily, accompanied by Mr. O'Donnell, who was about to take his departure. The parent Needhams stood side by side in the cottage doorway, hospitably bowing, but seeming to realize, with a kind of fineness, that they should come no further, and that the very last rites must be performed by the lady for whose sake he had been asked.

Mr. O'Donnell extended a hand of farewell to Louise, who rose.

"Oh, are you going?" she asked.

"Yes—simply have to. They'll decide at the Elmbrook that I'm lost, strayed, or stolen and will have a search party out!"

"Good-bye, Mr. O'Donnell," said Hilda, prettily holding out her hand. She was deliciously unspoiled.

He held her hand a moment, looked from her over to Leslie, then at the bunch of sharpened sticks. And he brazenly winked at Miss Whitcom, who, glancing discreetly in the direction of her elder niece, remarked that there was likely to be a gorgeous sunset.

O'Donnell and Leslie shook hands. "See you again tonight?" asked the boy politely.

"Yes, indeed!" Mrs. Needham called out. "He's coming over to the roast."

"You'll have a devil—I mean, it's very dark in the woods," said Leslie. He was quite horrified at the slip, and hurried on, expressing quick generosity by way of gaining cover—a generosity more generous, no doubt, than he had at first contemplated. "You'd better let me come and light you through."

O'Donnell patted the lad's shoulder in a very kindly manner, just as he might pat an obliging bellhop in one of the hotels on his route, who volunteered to get him up for a five o'clock train.

"Oh, no," he said. "Don't you bother."

"No bother at all," replied Leslie, suddenly seeming to grow quite enthusiastic over the idea of lighting Mr. O'Donnell through from Crystalia. His eye encountered Hilda's. It was finally agreed, and O'Donnell departed, in the very best sort of spirits.

When he had disappeared, the Rev. and Mrs. Needham strolled out on to the porch. The Rev. Needham was slowly gaining back his ruffled poise. He and O'Donnell had been smoking some more of the good cigars, and Marjory hadn't ventured anything so very revolutionary since the remark about not having time for church. He slipped an arm, just a tiny bit stiffly, about his wife's waist. He didn't exactly cuddle her; still, thus fortified, he looked across at his sister-in-law with an inner mild defiance.

"Well, I must run along," said Leslie, drawing a deep and very leisurely breath.

"Do you have to go so soon?" Hilda stepped down toward him.

He nodded, thrust his hands into his pockets, drew them out again, was painfully conscious that Louise was sitting up there on the porch.

Hilda came down another step and stood close to him. "It's awfully early, Les." Then a brilliant idea sent her unexpectedly scurrying up the steps and on to the porch. She whispered something in her mother's ear, upon which Mrs. Needham looked somewhat startled and shook her head. She and Eliza had planned so carefully. Leslie seemed almost like one of the family; but what if there shouldn't be enough?

Hilda tossed it off gallantly. She tripped back down the steps and said she would go with Leslie as far as the choke-cherry tree.

"Good-bye," said Leslie politely to the porch.

"Good-bye, Leslie," said the Rev. and Mrs. Needham in unison.

And it never occurred to them as odd that their younger should be accompanying Leslie as far as the choke-cherry tree. Oh, the incredible blindness of parents! Oh, what strangers one's children really are, after all! And yet, how could it be otherwise? Quaint souls—perhaps they did not even remember, now Lynndal had come, that it was to the choke-cherry tree their elder had been wont to go....

Louise called out: "'Bye, Les." She was rocking more vigorously. Her hands were clasped behind her head and her cheeks were flushed. There was a curious wild look in her eyes. Aunt Marjie thought her actually handsome just then.

At the choke-cherry tree Leslie and Hilda indulged in a very desultory leave-taking. Yet their talk was utterly devoid of anything either poetic or romantic.

"You'll get your shoe all full of sand, Les." He was scuffing it mechanically back and forth in the dust of the roadway.

"I don't care."

"I hate to have sand in my shoes."

But he laughed: "I don't know what it is not to."

Then he patted the bark of the choke-cherry tree and ran his palm up and down it, as though he were a lumberman and knew all about trees. And he gazed up at the tiny ripening berries. Suddenly he stopped patting the trunk and turned, leaning his back against it. He stood there, confused a little, tapping first one heel and then the other against a projecting root; for his exploring hand, as it chanced, had encountered a certain recently carved set of initials within a rude heart. All that was so long ago!

"What shall we do about the sticks?" asked Hilda. "Shall we have papa carry them down to the fire?"

"No, I'll carry them down. I'll come over and get them."

"But you're going to light Mr. O'Donnell through from Crystalia," she reminded him—then waited breathlessly.

He didn't disappoint her. "Please come along—won't you?"

"You mean when you go to light him?"

"Yes."

"You really want me to?"

He nodded.

A man was approaching them. He came round a bend in the road. It was Lynndal Barry.

"I've been for a little stroll," he explained. "These woods are certainly wonderful!"

"Yes, we like them," replied Hilda, in a very polite but at the same time very friendly tone. She was just a tiny bit afraid of the man who had come so far to marry her sister—not because Mr. Barry was the kind of man who spreads about him an aura of awe, but because Hilda knew there was something the matter. Yes, something seemed to be wrong. But Hilda did not guess how wrong.

"Were you going back to the cottage?" she asked.

"Yes, I thought I would."

"Then I'll walk back with you, if you don't mind."

"Well, good-bye," said Leslie.

"Good-bye, Les. You'll come for me?"

"Yes."

"What time?"

"Whenever you say."

"Right after dinner?"

"All right."

"So long."

"So long, Hilda."

He departed, scuffing foolishly and happily in the sand.

"We were cutting sticks for the roast," explained Hilda as she walked back beside Lynndal toward Beachcrest.

"It will be jolly," he remarked. "You know, I've never been to one of these beach roasts in my life."

"You never have?"

"No. And I've looked forward to the beach roasts ever since—well, ever since I knew I was going to be up here this summer."

"You see, you came just in time!"

"Yes, didn't I?"

"The mid-summer Assembly Roast is the biggest roast of all."

"I'm in luck," he murmured.

And so they chatted together until Beachcrest was reached.

3

On the porch, where Miss Whitcom had been regaling her relations with, it must be admitted, a rather sensational account of how the inhabitants of Tahulamaji had formerly been cannibals, the absence of Lynndal Barry was noticed.

"Where is he?" asked the Rev. Needham, with a quick inward flash of nervousness.

Louise was assailed by a great longing to come out, wildly and fully, with some superb flow of words which should ease the burden of her heart. It seemed urgent, in fact, that she explain his absence. Aunt Marjie braced herself for an expected scene. But just then the missing man put in an appearance. Hilda preceded him up the steps. Instead of crying out that her heart was breaking, Louise felt suddenly an insane desire to laugh. Hilda was leading Lynndal back, as though to compensate for leading Leslie off!

"Well, well," began the Rev. Needham, with all the hospitable bluffness he could summon. "We were talking about you!"

"—Wondering where you were," continued Mrs. Needham.

"—Fearing you might have embarked for the wicked city of Beulah," Marjory gaily carried it on, "where young men are not safe, and the song of the siren never dies away!"

The Rev. Needham looked startled, then rather grim, then again just vaguely uneasy. Barry explained that he had been strolling in the woods.

"No danger of getting lost, at any rate," declared Miss Whitcom, "since the church advertises so efficiently!"

There promised to be a rather pained silence; but Mrs. Needham rose, smoothed down the front of her skirt, and announced that she must go and dress for dinner.

"Ah, yes," lamented her sister cheerfully, "one must dress, even in the wilderness."

"Oh, we don't really make anything of it, Marjie. Only it sort of rests you—to make a change."

"Dress! Isn't it absurd? Yet how we dote on it! In this respect we aren't, after all, civilized to any dangerous degree. Why, in Tahulamaji—"

"Marjie, there isn't a bit of use of your changing. You look lovely."

"Thanks," replied her sister. "Still, one must."

"We all do just as we please up here in the woods, you know."

"Ah, but the men, the men," whispered Miss Whitcom with delicious vulgarity behind her hand. "And after all, we must have some regard for the conventions." Her tone was just a little pointed.

"Yes, Marjie, I suppose, in a way...." Anna admitted.

"And then—there's the church," Miss Whitcom persisted, almost brutally whimsical.

"The church?"

"Since it tries so very hard to keep abreast of the times—one might say, À la mode!"

The sisters went into the cottage. Louise rose.

"I must dress too," she announced, crossing quickly to the door.

"I like that gown ever so much," said Lynndal.

She turned and cast him a rueful glance. "Thank you. But I really must change." She smiled faintly. The high colour had faded, and her eyes had lost their look of splendid wildness.

"Wait for me!" cried Hilda, making a tomboy dive for the door, and capturing her sister's waist, hanging on her affectionately as they went in together.

"At any rate, we don't have to dress," laughed the Rev. Needham quite jovially.

"You're sure? I'd begun to get rather scared. You see I didn't bring out anything...."

The minister laughed again. "No, the men up here are more sensible."

"What did Miss Whitcom mean," asked Barry after a short pause, "when she spoke the way she did about the church?"

"The church, Barry?"

"Something about it being À la mode."

"Oh, I—the fact is, Barry, I don't quite know myself. I'm sure she didn't mean anything in particular. That is, you see Marjory has a kind of playful way of speaking.... You have to know her well to understand her."

"She seems like a very jolly sort."

"Yes, yes. She's ever so jolly. Sometimes I feel.... Well, of course, every one has their times of being jollier than at other times, don't they?" There seemed something here appealing, a little pathetic, even—as though Alfred Needham, if he only could one day get his heels down, would turn out really very jolly himself.

The conversation was growing thin, a little vague. It was a relief to have the talk drift into other and more concrete channels.

"Well," remarked Barry, "just before I left for the East we got the final engineering report on the new San Pedro reservoir. It looks pretty good to me."

"Something to open up a whole new area?"

"Yes, that's it. By building another dam—" And he explained the rather technical proposition.

"A good deal like the Santa Cruz, isn't it?" asked the minister.

"Yes, a good deal like that. You can be pretty sure of the water near the source, but of course the farther downstream you go, the less dependable the flow is. Sometimes there will be floods, and then again sometimes the bed will go entirely dry."

"Yes, yes," said the Rev. Needham meditatively, and almost as though in these fluxes of the Arizona rivers he recognized a subtle resemblance to life's fluxes which kept him ever hopping. "Let's see," he continued, "do I own anything just there, in the San Pedro valley?"

"You certainly do," replied Barry, and he drew a map out of his pocket, spread it on his knee, hitched his chair a little closer, and traced the Needham holdings with his pencil. "This strip in Cochise County—that little triangular patch there where Pinal and Pima join.... It ought to add quite a bit to your income, when the deal is really swung."

The Rev. Needham sighed appreciatively. "I wouldn't have any of these opportunities if it weren't for you being right there on the spot to look out for things."

"Oh, I do what I can," said Barry quietly. He folded up the map and put it away. "You see I'm very much interested in Arizona—new settlers coming all the time—new homes under way...." His eyes were dimly wistful. "Pretty soon we'll he getting another man in Congress...."

"Barry, do you suppose later on you'll be getting into politics?"

"Politics?" He laughed it away a little, yet at the same time clung to it, too. "Oh—you never can tell." As a matter of fact, as Louise could have told her father, the spring of a secret ambition had been touched. "Just now there's too much to do, developing—opening up the country.... There are plans in the air for another big power plant near Yuma. By the way, I can get you some shares there, if you like. As for politics...."

The Rev. Needham folded his arms with quiet pride. This was a man after his very heart. Perhaps he would be a Representative at Washington some day. Perhaps he would be Governor some day. And in the meantime, here he was, coming right into the family! No, the Rev. Needham could not have been any prouder of a son.

Upstairs all the ladies were in the midst of their toilettes. "O, world! O, life! O, time!"

"Are you girls putting on low neck?" demanded Miss Whitcom in her shrill way.

"Lou is," replied Hilda. "She always dresses when there's anything to go to, but I never do." She sighed. "Just think, Aunt Marjie, I haven't got a single low neck!"

"Cheer up, little one!" the aunt called over the three-quarters partition. "Your time's coming. I don't see—achu!—what you do about sunburn up here! Achu!"

She was deluging her neck and face with powder. Fortunately they were only going to a roast, and there wouldn't be much light, especially after the fire began to die down. Then she started slightly and frowned. Why on earth should one be concerned about a little sunburn? And yet—there was a thrill in the question, too. Miss Whitcom admitted she never would have been so concerned in the old days. These were new days. After all, Barrett seemed the only reality there was left. Yet there had seemed so many realities to begin with.

"Louise, what's the matter?" whispered Hilda, as she slipped a fresh jumper over her head and began tying its lace.

"What makes you think there's anything the matter?" asked her sister thickly.

"I know there is! You don't act like yourself at all. Is it—is there something about you and Mr. Barry?"

Louise's throat ached. She did not start, nor did she flush and cry out: "How did you guess?" Her throat ached; it ached cruelly.

"Lou, dear—tell me what's the matter!" implored Hilda, throwing her arms around her sister, and laying her cheek against the other's shoulder a moment.

"I—I can't," faltered Louise.

"Yes, you can. I knew there was something!"

Louise shook her head wretchedly.

"Doesn't he seem the same?"

"Don't, Hilda!" She wriggled nervously.

"Louise!"

"I—I...." She pushed herself free of an embrace which possessed, just now, no comfort. "Please don't say anything more. You mustn't."

"Well, I won't, Lou dear. Only it makes me feel bad to see you look this way. And I know there's something the matter."

"No, there isn't," replied Louise woodenly.

Hilda discovered, far in an unfrequented corner of her own little special chest of drawers which had been moved in out of Aunt Marjie's way, a fine new scarf. It was a scarf she had never worn before. Indeed, she had forgotten all about it. Now she remembered it had been put away carefully, with the understanding that it was to be brought out for some very special occasion. Her heart told her the golden hour had come. Her heart was so full of news that it began singing.

"We're going to light Mr. O'Donnell through to the roast!"

"Who?" asked Louise. She spoke impulsively, as all the Needhams were in the habit of speaking. Had she thought a moment she would not have asked.

Hilda told her, with a thrill of most abundant happiness. She hugged her happiness; she did not know what it cost her sister.

Louise braced herself. The evening had to be got through somehow. But after tonight—then what? Her father would be expecting Lynndal to come to him to talk it over. And how terrible! Would it, perhaps—her thoughts were flying helter-skelter—would it perhaps make some fatal difference in the Western business? Would Lynndal continue to look after the interests, just as before? Could any one reasonably expect the relations all around to remain quite what they had been?

Remorse stole dully over her. She had come between her father and his friend. Could he forgive her? And could her father? Why had she done such a thing? But was it final? All those letters.... At length he was here ... had come so far ... and what had she done? In the morning she had gone to meet her lover. It had seemed fine and romantic. She had told Leslie they must be only friends now. It had all appeared quite easy and rather delightful. Then Lynndal had come, and ... and then what? What was it that had happened? It had seemed to her that she could not give herself up....

If only she could have a sudden change of heart! One read of such things, now and then. If only she could rush joyously down to him, where he sat talking with her father, and tell him she did love him! But after all, she could only go on dressing, miserably dressing.

"Do I look all right, Lou?" asked Hilda, much as Louise had put the same question to her at dawn.

Her sister told the plain truth in a syllable. Yes. She certainly did. Of course a jumper, even with so fine a new sash under its collar, wasn't quite as nice as low neck. But Hilda was undeniably charming. Louise felt a sudden elemental pang of jealousy.

Hilda's heart was in a great flutter. She liked Leslie ever so well. She didn't know any other boy she liked so well as Leslie. Have a care, little Hilda. Ah, have a care! Your age protects you. But later, when you have substituted loving for liking, things will be different. When Louise was your age she let Harold Gates kiss her a great many times. She let him put his arm around her, and when he had to leave her on account of the girl he had brought along with him to the picnic, she did not care—very much. Or at least she did not care very long. But now see, Hilda. Your sister has become a woman. She has learned to love, and play quite fearlessly with love. But love is a terrible thing, and your sister is not very wise.

Have a care, Hilda! As you value what is precious and fine in life—beware! Oh, Hilda, beware, when the heart has matured, that you do not reap a whirlwind of ghosts....

4

At dinner Miss Whitcom was treated to an entrancing account of the Assembly Roast, viewed as an institution.

"Of course," explained the Rev. Needham, "in the largest sense it's a religious function—a kind of general get-together, before the lecture season opens." It seemed a now more cautious way of reiterating that the church must advertise.

"But you see," contributed Mrs. Needham, "it was started by the Goodmans. He's a clergyman from Cleveland."

"It's their anniversary," added Hilda.

Thus, piecemeal, the momentous facts came out.

"Anniversary?"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie."

"Let's see—how many is it this year?" asked Mrs. Needham turning to her husband.

"Twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, I think," he replied.

"Oh, Alf, do you think the Goodmans have been married that long?"

"You know," declared Miss Whitcom, "all this is interesting but terribly mysterious. Thanks, Anna, I've had the pickles. I'm mystified by these Goodmans from Cleveland. So I understand the Midsummer Roast is in the nature of an anniversary party also?"

"Well, yes," replied Anna Needham. "It was started, I guess, more than twenty years ago, even before we began coming up here. There were only a few families at first. Alf, were the Goodmans the first to begin coming up?"

"Unless it was Blakes," he suggested.

"But didn't the Blakes begin coming because the Goodmans did, Alf?"

"Well, maybe so. Marjory, can't I help you to a little more of the lamb?"

"No, no," protested his sister-in-law. "I'm doing famously."

"Alf, Marjie will have some more potatoes, I'm sure."

"No. Doing famously. Never mind my plate, but do let's get it straight about the Goodmans. Thanks, Hilda, I will have another biscuit. It all sounds terribly romantic!"

"Yes, it is," Hilda boldly assured her. "They always kiss right before everybody on their anniversary. And in the morning—"

"Hilda!" cautioned her father, rather sternly.

The girl endeavoured to conceal her confusion by addressing herself very elaborately to the spreading of a biscuit.

"Oh, now, Alfred," remonstrated his sister-in-law, "you're worse than a war censor! Since it's quite apparent the whole Point knows about the kissing—Anna, may I trouble you for another glass of water?—why shouldn't I be admitted to so very large a secret? There's surely room for one more, and you may pledge me to profound secrecy if you like. I'm dying to know what it is they do in the morning!"

Hilda was gaining back her nerve. "They run away and have breakfast together at the hotel! That's what they do, Aunt Marjie!"

"Oh, how charming!"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie, they've done it every year since they were married!"

"They have? Well, now, I call that pure romance! How coy! How it must carry them back! I think I'd really like to know the Goodmans. There isn't such a great deal of pure romance available nowadays. People are too self-conscious."

"You'll meet them tonight," was the hope Mrs. Needham held out. And then, while her husband began carving fresh slices of lamb, and since the subject of the Midsummer Roast seemed about exhausted, Anna went chattily on: "Marjie, I must say I like Mr. O'Donnell real well."

"Speaking of pure romance?" her sister sparklingly interpolated. "Yes," she continued, "Barrett's a good chap. Used to be a bit egregious, you know, in the old days. But he's mellowed wonderfully. I—I'll let you in on a tremendous secret," she added, with mock breathlessness, and addressing herself to Alfred behind her hand. "If he should happen to ask me again—I'm only saying if, you understand...." She finished eloquently in pantomime.

The Rev. Needham dropped his fork, but quickly recovered it and went on eating. He had just told himself that no matter what new monstrosity his sister-in-law might enunciate, he would magnificently let it pass. He would not appear to notice it. He was a clergyman. There was a certain dignity to be preserved in spite of everything. But good heavens, she had said it behind her hand!

"Oh-h-h!" said Hilda. She giggled.

"Barrett is an old peach," continued Miss Whitcom quite brazenly. "He's stood by me through everything!"

The Rev. Needham nearly dropped his fork again. That awful word. Everything! And she could be so damnably cool about it! Was he narrow or old-fashioned to feel the way he did? Yet would not feeling any other way be simply debauching oneself? Ah, if, instead of his changing his own point of view, she might somehow drop off into a deep, painless slumber.... And never wake....

"Well, then," said Anna, who had kept perfectly her head, and was also rather thrilled, "I hope he will, Marjie."

Marjory looked dreamily off through the open window. A few birches caught the evening light mistily, and were dyed a delicate pink all along their slim white trunks. Would he? Ah, of course! And yet.... Well—hm?... If not, why.... She mentally tossed her head. But what she told herself was not quite so haughty: "In that case I could hardly blame anybody but myself...."

By this time it might be said that the edge, at least, of hunger was taken off. All had eaten quite heartily, except Louise. But even Louise, though she dimly felt this was not as it should be, had found it possible to do at least a little nibbling. Of course it would be out of the question to expect her to eat like the rest. It was another case of Richard. Probably she would not eat just like the rest for a good while to come. Still, she would manage to keep going. One always did that in real life.

The Rev. Needham, however, was at length coming definitely to notice things. Louise, some more of the lamb? No? Surely more of the creamed carrots? But you're so fond of them! Ah, yes. There were sharp and anxious glances in the direction of this baffling elder daughter. She wasn't eating right. And when any of the Needhams didn't eat right, you could be very sure there was something wrong with the heart.

But now, anxious paternal orbs, let your troubled gaze shift to another plate—the next plate nearer your own. Oh, man of God, what cheer? Barry, another slice? Ah, but never you mind that—no one stops at a second helping here! No more potatoes, either? Tz, tz! Oh, reverend sir, what a load to fetch back to your expectant flock in the fall! Oh, if anything should happen now—now, just as life was becoming so kind! Oh, now—and those prickles in the heels occurring with less and less frequency, even despite the upsetting presence of Marjory! To have something go wrong—at his time of life.... To find the world running all to sixes and sevens....

Oh, it must be a wild and overwhelming fancy, nothing more than that! Barry (he rambled wildly in his mind) for mercy's sake more carrots? And aloud: "Just a few more, Barry?" Good! No, no, one hasn't heaped them up. One only wants to be sure. And if there is no absolute assurance in this hard world, one so beset can be forgiven for taking refuge behind appearances—even behind appearances of one's own manufacture, in an extremity like this! Yes, by hook or by crook one must contrive to keep the best foot foremost!

Barry, as a matter of fact, was doing pretty well and feeling pretty wretched. He had got through the afternoon coolly enough on a kind of momentum generated partly by the decision that he had simply been a fool to dream such dreams, and partly by that hopeful, wise, desperate little word of counsel, that fine word, patience. But here, all at once, was a pang of reaction. All the old, warm, wistful love came rushing back. The ancient dreams of home and wife and children returned to taunt and torture him. Only last night, on the deck of the steamer, with the moon so soft on the sea—ah, only last night.... How he had let himself go! How he had even pictured things: the fireplace here, perhaps the piano there.... And how his cigar had gone out, and he hadn't noticed. But now he was sitting beside her at her father's table, and he did not know whether she loved him or not. And in his pocket was a box with a ring inside it—a ring for which there might never be any use.

Mrs. Needham noticed, too. But Louise had already explained that she had a headache. The mother did not suspect that there was anything necessarily portentous in the air, and her heart beat placidly enough. Her life seemed settling and settling. The current grew more and more tranquil. She had times of feeling so kind of still.

Later the talk centred in Arizona.

Barry glanced at Louise, and found her, as it happened, gazing sadly, quizzically, and with some abstraction at him. He looked away at once, trembling a little; and he carried on the theme:

"Of course Arizona strikes people in different ways. Some find the flatness and the sand depressing."

"Is it sand all over?" asked Hilda.

"Oh, dear no!" replied Miss Whitcom, with a vehemence which served to remind them all that she had been a pioneer in the cactus candy business and knew what she was talking about.

Even the Rev. Needham contributed something to his younger daughter's enlightenment. "There are lots of trees along the irrigation ditches. Barry, what kind of trees are they? I never can seem to remember."

"Cottonwood, mostly," he answered. "The foliage is a very delicate green."

"Oh, it must be lovely!" sighed Hilda, who romantically saw herself walking along beside Leslie beneath an everlasting row of the most beautiful trees anybody could possibly imagine. "How I should love to go out there!"

"Yes," mused Miss Whitcom, "and we mustn't forget the broad fields of alfalfa—so dark—the very greenest green in all the world."

Barry nodded slowly. "Yes, the river valleys are always quite fertile. Then comes the great Arizona desert, with cacti and mesquite and greenwood and sage. And beyond all that"—he had begun a little monotonously, but came at length to speak in a rather rapt way—"beyond all that, the dim blue of the distance, the lonely peaks of the mountains...."

"Grand old mountains!" added Miss Whitcom.

And it was odd, and no doubt sentimental, but the mountains all at once reminded her somehow of O'Donnell. Yes, O'Donnell was something like a mountain. Her heart quickened a little.

"Oh, I know I should just love it!" cried Hilda. And then she asked, in her almost breathless manner: "Are there any birds in Arizona?"

"Birds?" repeated Barry, a little abstractedly. "Birds? Oh, yes—all through the irrigated districts. There are orchards, you know. It's a fine sight to see them in full bloom. And the trees are alive with birds—meadow larks and mocking birds, mostly. And there are blackbirds, too. They sing in a wonderful chorus. And almost everywhere you'll hear the little Mexican doves."

"Oh, I remember the doves!" cried Louise suddenly, forgetting her wretchedness.

He looked at her wistfully and solemnly. "Some people say the doves have the sweetest song of all. There's a very plaintive note—you remember?"

"Yes," she whispered thickly, avoiding his eyes.

The breath of Fate seemed faintly to animate her having remembered the little Mexican doves. "I think," he said, "they have the saddest song of any of the birds."

5

A remark, dreadful yet tantalizing in the vistas it opened up, was overheard by the Rev. Needham as he was coming out on to the screened porch. It was a remark which set on foot an increasingly turbulent desire to know, unequivocally and without expurgation, just what had been the nature of his sister-in-law's life on the distracting island of Tahulamaji.

Mrs. Needham had retired to the kitchen for a final fling with Eliza about breakfast, leaving the minister alone in the living room with his daughter. Miss Whitcom and Mr. Barry had passed out on to the porch, and Louise had dropped down in a nice shadowy corner with a book—just as young ladies naturally and invariably do after dinner, when the light is beginning to fail, and their lover is waiting for them outside.

The Rev. Needham, whose suspicions had already been rather alarmingly roused, now felt sure not all was well. Why should Louise behave like this if all were well? And even Barry—Barry wasn't, of course, one of those romantic fellows who would always be sighing and rolling their eyes; but there were subtler manifestations.... They had gone walking together in the afternoon—thank God! There was that much to cling to. Yes, thank heaven they had done that much anyway!

But the Rev. Needham was so full of perplexity that he hardly knew what to do next. He told himself, in desperation, that everything must, in reality, be all right—rather much as his daughter had assured herself on the train that all must work out for the best: her best. He knew, as a matter of fact, that this was not quite honest persuasion. But it helped. Oh, it was a very present help. To tell the truth, it sufficed to carry him quickly out of his daughter's presence. In his heart, the minister knew that the issue ought to be faced at once. Yes, he ought to call Louise over on to his knee, just as in the old days, before any of the unhappy love troubles began, and ask her to tell him what had gone wrong. But he didn't call her over. Instead he began humming in a perfectly unconcerned manner, and strolled outside.

It was just as he reached the door that the Rev. Needham overheard the all but blood-curdling remark.

"You must realize," Miss Whitcom was saying to his daughter's fiancÉ, "that it's much too hot there to wear any clothes!"

It being patently too late to turn back, the clergyman came on; somehow reached a chair. He sat down quickly and began rocking. He rocked helplessly, yet withal in a faintly ominous way—perhaps, deeper still, with a movement of guilty curiosity: for after all he was but human, poor man.

The sun had just dipped, and the sky and the sea were alive with the fire of this august departure. A wraith-like distribution of cloud still received direct beams and glowed like a bit of magic dream-stuff; but the lower world had to rest content now with reflected glory—a sheen of softening brightness which would grow steadily thicker and thicker, like quandary in the clergyman's breast, till at length the light was all gone and darkness had settled across the sea and the sand. Ah, peaceful eventide! Good-bye, sweet day! But the heart of the minister was all full of horrid little quick jerks and a settling mugginess.

The conversation his appearance had served to interrupt did not continue as it had evidently begun. Yet even at its worst it appeared to have constituted merely a laughing digression from the major theme, which had to do with the perfectly proper topic of dry-farming. No one would think of calling the topic of dry-farming improper. But the tenor of the talk which succeeded the minister's arrival in their midst did not, for all its unimpeachable correctness, serve to diminish the poignancy of that awful phrase: too hot to wear any clothes!

"Mr. Barry," she explained to her brother-in-law, "has been telling me a lot of interesting things about the sorghums."

Alfred Needham cleared his throat—just as he always did, for instance, before ascending the pulpit on Sunday—and nodded. But he was not thinking about the sorghums—just as sometimes, it is to be feared, in the very act of coming out of the vestry, and with the eyes of the congregation upon him, he failed to keep his mind entirely on the sermon he was about to deliver.

"It seems they've made enormous strides since my day," she went on. "Mr. Barry, how many varieties did you say are now possible?"

"Well," he replied solemnly, his eyes large with helpless unhappiness, "the sorghums now include common or sweet sorghum, milo maize, Kaffir corn—and of course broom corn. These have become standard crops, and we're introducing them more and more into the southern district." He rocked a trifle self-consciously. All three rocked a moment in silence.

"There's considerably less rainfall down there," commented the Rev. Needham.

The statement had been carefully equipped with earmarks of the interrogative, so that, should it happen to prove incorrect, refutation would take the form of a simple answer to an ingenuous and perfectly natural question. The Rev. Needham found it urgent to keep his inflections always slightly interrogative. There was even a sly, sneaking hint of the useful question mark throughout the reverend man's theology. Ghastly as the thing must sound spoken right out, it is really doubtful whether the Rev. Needham would be caught altogether napping were the entire Bible suddenly to be proved spurious! Of course when Barry admitted that there was less rainfall in the southern part, then the minister rocked with subtly renewed purpose, slapping the arms of his chair exactly as an acknowledged authority on rainfall might be expected to do. But of course it was all ever so much subtler than this makes it appear. It was infinitely more delicate than any mere I-told-you-so attitude.

"You know," continued Barry, who felt an unpleasant thickness in his throat, "the sorghums have to be able to withstand a great deal of drought. They roll up their leaves and seem to sleep for months at a time; and when the rain comes again they revive quickly and make rapid strides."

Inside the cottage sat Louise. She was huddled miserably over a book. She was not reading the book, though it chanced to be a very absorbing historical novel. It is hard to conceive of a young lady's not reading such a work with avidity and even breathlessness, under the circumstances. But to be perfectly accurate, Louise hadn't even opened the historical novel. It simply lay in her lap, and she was huddled over it. Her eyes were dry. She was utterly miserable. And just outside, in the full, fresh sweetness of diminishing dayshine, sat the man who had come all this way to put a ring on her finger. He was sitting out there in the romantic richness of the tinted evening, and he was talking about the sorghums!

Oh, a wise plant is the sorghum. When there is a drought it rolls up its leaves and waits till it is time for the refreshment of another rain. The sorghum knows well how to plan and bide its time. The sorghum would not give itself too easily....

Out on the rustic bench which her dear father had so laboriously constructed sat Hilda. She was listening for steps in the sand. She would know whose steps they were when they drew close. It was growing quite dusky underneath the trees. The stars would soon be appearing. There had been a slight breeze all the afternoon, but it had died away; and on the beach the tiny waves were whispering that it had passed that way and was now still. The trees stood very quiet, but occasionally a squirrel would whisk by overhead. The squirrels, however, were turning in for the night now, and soon there would be no stir left save only the night stir of the woods. Far off sounded at intervals the shouts of young children—children younger than Hilda, and unfettered as yet by any sweet obligation of sitting very breathless, listening for steps in the sand.

"How lovely everything is!" thought Hilda.

When she saw Leslie she ran out to meet him—no mooning pretense at not having heard.

"Oh, Les, why don't you light it?"

He carried a Japanese lantern and was swinging it about in a very reckless way.

"Shall I?" he asked. "Now?"

"Oh, yes! It isn't quite dark yet, but it will be so much fun!"

"The candle's pretty short, Hilda. Do you think it will last?"

"Let me see." They bent their heads eagerly over the paper lantern.

"It isn't very long, is it Les? I guess we'd better put in a new one. There are lots of them at the cottage."

And before he could protest she was flying off.

On the screened porch she found the entire household assembled. Mrs. Needham had completed her session with Eliza and was now pleasantly rocking. Ah, there was a rhythm in her rocking—especially of late years. It was the sort of rhythm the vers librists have so entirely broken away from. It was a rocking which rarely went slower or faster. Perhaps it was the Homeric hexameter. Or it was stately blank verse, with maybe the quaint rhyming couplets of Crabbe and Cowper. No one could ever think of mistaking it for Edgar Lee Masters!

Louise had come out also. Hilda, as she flew by and on into the cottage, saw her sister sitting beside Lynndal Barry on a rocking settee. There was, as a matter of fact, not a single stationary piece of furniture on the porch. To Anna Needham, rocking was pleasant and even actually profitable. To her husband—well, to the Rev. Needham it seemed a kind of muscular necessity. And the girls had always been used to it. So all the chairs rocked.

Aunt Marjie sighed briefly as Hilda ran by. Boy-crazy. Well, life wasn't made for waiting and working alone. Somehow, this sea air—these lustrous, still nights—were stealing away her resistance. Yes, O'Donnell was a kind of mountain. And yet, curiously enough, he was only a travelling man, too, just as he had always been. Yes, he travelled for Babbit & Babbit. But she would go home to him at last. She would put her head on his shoulder, if he would let her, just like a silly young thing. Suddenly she saw her life as a restless confusion of ambitions and beginnings. Oh, to have spent it so! To have waited as long as this! To have been so afraid of giving herself too easily....

Hilda came running out again. She clutched a new candle in her hand. Her eyes were quite wonderful.

"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. Needham, appearing a little bewildered by this cyclonic going and coming.

"He's out there; we're going to start now!"

There was just sufficient coherence to bring Miss Whitcom to her feet. Always impulsive, she stepped to the screen door and thence down on to the path.

"Hilda!"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie?"

"You're going to light O'Donnell through to the Point?"

"Yes, Aunt Marjie."

"Well, be sure you don't lose yourselves!" No, even Marjory, with her amazing retrospect of brass, did not quite dare to say: "Don't lose him!" And yet, so far as her heart was concerned, it really amounted to that.

The last thing Hilda heard, as she sped off, was the patient voice of Lynndal Barry. The minister had asked him another question about the sorghums.

"Yes," Barry was saying, "there are about as many varieties of Kaffir corn and milo maize as of the saccharine sorghums. Only a few have been tested in the South: red Kaffir corn, black hulled white Kaffir, standard milo maize, and dwarf milo maize. But we intend—"

Hilda, skipping with happiness, heard no more.

6

The procession through the forest of Betsey was a very romantic affair. First came Hilda and Leslie, the latter carrying the lighted Japanese lantern swung over his shoulder. And behind them walked Mr. O'Donnell, like some great monarch; and he must indeed, just then, have felt himself at least the king of all travelling men. What would his colleagues of the grip think if they could see him now? Had any of them, for all their store of timetables and their samples and routes and customers, ever marched through so royal a forest, on such a night, lighted by young love and a gay paper lantern?

Over the hills and through the valleys of Betsey! It was a wonderful lark. Of course it wouldn't last. Real larks never did. He would go back to his grim bag of samples, and she would go back to her beloved Tahulamaji. There would be thousands of miles between them once more, and life would settle back into the uneventful dog-trot which had become the established gait. But tonight! Tonight he was parading the forest of Betsey like a very king, and his way was lighted by a bright paper lantern which danced at the end of a bough.

"Now," he thought slyly, "if I were a poet...." However, being no poet, but only a travelling man in the employ of Babbit & Babbit, our friend simply walked along, like the plain mortal he was; and was content, if with a sigh, things should be as they were. "Ah, this is fine!" he would exclaim in his quiet way. And Hilda, for all her heart was so richly moved, would merely reply: "Yes, we like it."

It had been agreed upon that O'Donnell should be led directly to the scene of the Assembly Roast instead of being brought all the way round to Beachcrest first. The Needhams, Miss Whitcom, and Barry were to walk up the beach, when it was time.

It was at length about as dark as it ever gets in moonlight season. The moon had not yet risen, but would be coming up soon. The Rev. Needham suggested that it was time to start.

Miss Whitcom was on her feet at once. There followed quite a little flurry about wraps. The Rev. Needham and Barry strolled on ahead down to the beach. They walked slowly, and the ladies were to overtake them. Both men were smoking cigars, the ministerial supply seeming happily inexhaustible. If one's faith might be as inexhaustible!

Being a little ill at ease, they talked of obvious things: the broadness of the beach just here, the firmness of the sand, its pleasant crunch under the feet.

"We tried to have a board walk down from the cottage," observed the Rev. Needham, "but every winter the sand drifted all over it and buried it, so we had to give up the idea." He was wondering nervously whether Barry would seize this occasion to ask for his daughter's hand.

"You really don't need a walk," replied his guest. "It's an agreeable change from the city this way."

"Yes—yes, it's a change."

There was a short, awkward pause. Then Barry remarked. "You've got an ideal location here."

And the minister answered: "Yes, we like it."

They trudged on a little way in silence.

"There certainly are a lot of stars out tonight," commented Barry, transferring his gaze rather abruptly from the sands to the heavens.

"Um—yes. Yes, there are a great many. And there will be a full moon, later on."

"Yes, I know. The moon was wonderful last night on the lake. I sat out on deck a long time."

"You said you had a good trip across, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes—perfectly smooth."

Another silence—an ominous desperate silence.

"Well," quoth the Rev. Needham, turning around and peering back, "I wonder if they're not coming?"

"I think I see them coming now across the sand," remarked Barry.

"Yes—yes, I believe I do, too," the other agreed.

"That's Louise in the white dress."

"Yes, that's Louise."

It wasn't long before the ladies overtook them. The tension was at once both relieved and heightened. Anna Needham claimed her husband's arm, Louise walked beside Barry, and Miss Whitcom walked alone with her thoughts. However, the groups were not isolated. Yes, there was safety in numbers. Single encounters began to be desperately unpleasant.

What was the matter? In Anna's day, young folks had been given, she remembered, to wandering significantly off by themselves on such rare nights as this. But Louise and Lynndal kept close. Anna was troubled about this—even whispered about it to her husband as they walked along. Alfred started and began to talk about something else. They ought to face this thing. They ought to face it squarely and with courage. But Alfred couldn't. He told himself they must be only imagining things.

They passed the lighthouse, so shadowy and gaunt itself, yet with so beaming an eye! Adjoining the tower was the keeper's residence. There were lights in some of the rooms. A child was calling. A dog was sniffing about. He was quite used to resorters, and did not even bark as the party approached and passed the premises. Louise stooped to pat the dog's head. Barry said: "Hello, sir!" The dog wagged his tail slowly, but did not follow them away from the house. He had learned all life's lessons in puppyhood. He would never stray. What a grand thing, never to stray!

When they were rounding the final curve of the Point separating them from the rendezvous, Mrs. Needham cried: "Oh, look—they're lighting it already!"

The cone-shaped pile was visible, and fire was leaping all about the base. Flame shot up quickly to the very peak, and thence on up, higher and higher, toward the stars.

There was quite a crowd assembled about the fire when the people from Beachcrest arrived. O'Donnell and his delightful escort arrived from another direction at almost the same moment. Then they all sat around in the sand, and kept jumping up to introduce and be introduced. Naturally the Needhams knew everybody on the Point; and it was always quite a thing to have guests. Here were the Goodmans, smiling hosts to the entire assembly. Had they not started the thing long ago when their married life was in its springtime? Ah, the Goodmans! Miss Whitcom remarked afterward that she felt as though she were shaking hands with royalty. "It honestly reminded me," she said, "of my first meeting with Queen Tess!"

In the excitement, of course the roasting sticks had been forgotten, and of course Hilda insisted upon running all the way back with Leslie to Beachcrest after them. By the time the sticks were there, the fire had flared itself into a condition inviting the approach of wienies and marshmallows. A ring of resorters hovered round the fire with sticks held hopefully out and faces shielded by an arm. Naturally there were some mishaps. Some one, by deftly turning and turning, would coax a marshmallow to the point of the most golden perfection, only to have it plump dismally down in the sand at last. Then there would be a chorus of sympathy and disappointment from a group of sitters, each of whom had perhaps more or less hoped to be favoured with the delicious smoking confection. Or else it would be a frankfurter that plumped. But there never was a roast without tragedies.

And everywhere romped the children. Sometimes they would throw themselves on to their stomachs and begin ambitiously digging in the sand toward water. Then they would leap and chase each other, or they would go about thrusting fallen faggots back into the fiery heart of the blaze.

The provision baskets stood hospitably open. In one might be discovered a wealth of cool, slippery frankfurters; in another heaps of split and buttered buns; in still another dill pickles, a pot of mustard. And of course there were always marshmallows. Some preferred marshmallows to frankfurters and some preferred frankfurters to marshmallows. But the majority ate ravenously of both alike, displaying little or no preference.

The eastern sky grew lighter and lighter. The trees stood out mysterious and very black against it.

"Look, look!" cried the children.

For the moon was rising now.

The young boys grew restive. Their stomachs were simply closed to the incursion of any more refreshment; it was a pity, no doubt, but full was full. The boys began enlarging their area of prowess. There was a great sand bluff inland a short way, where a rift in the hills cut a deep, barren gash across the face of the forest. The boys crept far up the bluff and then leapt out, down and down.

The east was luminous, and the great moon crept higher and higher. When the boys leapt, their bodies were silhouetted against her bright disc. They would appear out of the shadow of nothing, poise a moment, leap into space, disappear.

"Well," observed Barry, in some surprise, "I see you've brought a book along."

She had really forgotten the book was in her lap, as she sat huddled over it so miserably in the cottage living room after dinner. When she had gone out on to the porch afterward she had carried it with her automatically, and so had brought it all the way to the roast without thinking. Louise had a grimly whimsical feeling that she couldn't get away from the book. "If I'd only thrown it into the harbour this morning!" she thought. But to him she merely replied, a manufactured gaiety edging the words without lightening them: "Oh, yes—it's a book I picked up by chance." She handled it carelessly, and her quick glance shot to a distant group. Leslie was lying stretched out in the sand, his chin in his hands. He was looking up at Hilda, who appeared to be recounting something of great interest. Louise felt her face go hot with jealousy. "I—I don't know much about it," she went on, flapping the cover of the book listlessly back and forth. "It was recommended to me by some one who had read it."

"What is the name?" Barry asked politely.

She held the book up in the firelight, flaunting it in the face of the man who had come so far with his love and his brave little ring. It was the darkest hour of her pilotless groping.

Leslie's laugh rang. The little group took it up. Then Leslie himself appeared to become the centre of interest. He began telling a story which involved a great many gestures. At one stage he even jumped up and turned a cartwheel, and one of the girls in the crowd exclaimed: "Can't you just see it?"

"Oh, what shall I do?" thought Louise, fighting her tears.

The moon climbed slowly up the sky, and the young boys, one after another, with loud shrieks of joy, silhouetted themselves darkly against her gleaming face.

And then the speech making began.

The Rev. Goodman led off. He had something in the nature of a set speech for the occasion, which varied surprisingly little from year to year. It bade the guests welcome, always in the same felicitous terms, and contained the same allusions to the salubriousness of the climate, the unmatchable beauty of their Point. Alluding to God's Great Out-of-Doors, the Rev. Goodman would invariably employ the same grand gesture.

"And now," he concluded, "I am sure, dear friends, we feel a gratitude in our hearts to the Father of All Goodness, who has guided our footsteps," et cetera, et cetera. "And may we all bow our heads with the Rev. Needham, and join him in prayer."

The Rev. Goodman sat down and the Rev. Needham scrambled to his feet. He closed his eyes very tight and prayed quite loud—as though defying Marjory to prevail against him here. It was the next thing to being right in the pulpit! But he felt her gazing at him in that shrewd way of hers which seemed saying: "Alfred, have you really got truth in your heart?" What did Marjory mean by looking at him that way? What right had she to question his faith and to speak of truth?

It was really a very good prayer, though perhaps just a little more earnest than the occasion actually required. When the prayer was finished, he sat down. (Naturally there was no applause.) All the other speakers would be applauded, but no applause lightened the sitting down of the Rev. Needham. However, there was a general stir in the camp, just as there is in church when backs, wearied with the Sabbath bending, straighten cheerfully for another seven days of sin.

And then the Rev. Goodman, who was the official toastmaster, jumped up and told a humorous story, which every one had heard before; after which he turned to the Rev. Blake and asked him to recite The House By the Side of the Road, a very great favourite at the Point. Then the congregation sang that cheering and beautiful hymn, Rock of Ages, under cover of which most of the boys escaped and ran violent races up and down the beach. Then the host told another moderately humorous story, in which he very cleverly incorporated something about the brother clergyman upon whom he meant to call for the next selection. This clergyman (who hailed from Dubuque, Iowa), not to be outdone, scored heavily by telling a humorous story he had learnt off from The Ladies' Home Journal, but which in the telling he so miraculously manipulated that the Rev. Goodman became its hero! There always was a vast amount of pleasant playfulness at these Assembly Roasts. Later on the congregation, sitting, sang that sublimely joyous hymn called Jesus, Lover of My Soul. Since there was no judicious organist at hand to speed things up, the singing was inclined to sag, and one half of the camp finished a little bit behind the other. But this was a very small matter indeed, because, as every one knows, it is the spirit that counts most, especially at such times. Innumerable other speakers, many of them purely secular, were called upon. And Mrs. Goodman, who was quite an elocutionist, read a little story which only the innermost circle could hear. And Miss Whitcom nudged her friend. They slipped away and strolled along the beach together.

"I thought I'd rescue you, Barrett," she said.

"But I was immensely enjoying myself," he smilingly protested.

"Yes, I shouldn't wonder—especially the singing! You know, I was so desperately afraid they might call upon me—just as a curiosity, you know—and how I should have shocked them!"

"You think so?"

"Why, of course. I never open my mouth without shocking somebody or other. I don't really set out to do it. I simply don't seem able to help myself."

"You don't shock me."

"Perhaps not—any more."

"But you know you never really did."

"Never?"

"No. At worst you only opened my eyes."

"Well, Barrett," she said, after a short silence, "I think I've always rather felt that: that you understood, deep down—that you weren't quite shockable, in fact."

"Yes," he said meditatively. They strolled along, saying nothing more for a little time.

At length she asked: "Do you remember the time we swam for the Allenhurst medal?"

"Of course I do," he nodded.

"You remember how even we were—how we outdistanced all the others?"

He smiled queerly. "They hadn't a chance!"

"Right-O, Barrett. We knew how to stroke in those days! Well," she continued after a moment, "and you haven't forgotten how I won the race—and why?"

"A sudden cramp—I thought I was done for!"

"Oh, no, my friend." They were both smiling. "Time has played tricks with your memory. It wasn't a cramp. Now think, think hard. You went lazy at the finish. And so how could I help pulling in ahead in spite of myself?"

"Marjory, I—"

"Be not forsworn, my friend. Let's agree that you went lazy at the finish. After all these years, can't we? It was a singular thing," she went on, half gravely and half smilingly. "You know I was just at the age.... Well, it had a most singular effect upon me. Yes, I may say it altered the whole course of my life, Barrett." She laughed softly.

"Great heavens, Marjory, you don't honestly mean ...!"

"Well, you see, I was one of the first of the 'new' women, and I just simply rebelled. That was all. You haven't forgotten how I sent the medal back to you?"

He looked quite serious. "I know," he said softly. "I was stupid about it for a long time. There didn't seem to be any sense in your sending it back. In fact...." He hesitated.

"Do let's be perfectly frank!" she invited, with another short laugh.

"Well, I thought it a wilful and childish attitude to take. I didn't want them to say I'd beaten a woman. We were still living on the fringe of chivalry, you know, when it was more important to walk on the proper side of a woman and tip your hat to her at a certain angle than to give her the vote. I was brought up in a delightful Victorian atmosphere, where it wasn't considered the thing even to beat a woman at tennis, if you could decently help it."

"Ah, yes!" cried Marjory. "Just think of it! But gradually you grew wiser, Barrett—you and the world."

"Yes," he muttered, "I and the world."

"You came to see...."

"Yes, I came at last to see that you can't go lazy at the finish any more. I told you, and I meant it, that at last I've capitulated—capitulated at every point."

They walked on a little way in the moonlight, close to the waves. All at once a bold thrill of tenderness came on him. He drew the woman into his arms. She responded slowly. Afterward she professed to be not quite sure whether they had kissed.

But there was a witness. Oh, yes—there was a witness who could emphatically and joyfully testify that they did kiss, and that they kissed more than once. The witness, of course, was our ubiquitous little pagan god, who had abandoned at least a half dozen most promising cases at the roast to chase for a moment down the beach after this pair of obdurate mortals who had held off for twenty years.

7

At about ten o'clock the Rev. Needham took out his watch and thought it was time he and his little party set their faces homeward. Mrs. Needham had been talking gentle gossip with Mrs. Blake and the wife of the minister from Dubuque; but she got up at once and obediently took her husband's arm.

"We go to bed early at Beachcrest," she explained. They went to bed early in town, for that matter, though the full truth went uncommunicated.

"Where are the girls?" demanded the Rev. Needham, looking anxiously round.

Louise came up hurriedly, followed by Barry. "Are you starting home now, papa?" she asked, with what sounded strangely like eagerness.

"Well, we thought we'd just be starting along. It's—it's not late yet, you know. We'll just slip on ahead and get the cottage lighted."

"I think we'll go along now too."

"Oh, I wouldn't hurry. The fire's quite good yet."

"Lynndal is tired," she insisted. "He didn't sleep more than a couple of hours on the boat." And she gave him a very complex glance in which there was something whisperingly like an element of tenderness.

"Well," capitulated Mrs. Needham.

But Louise was only one daughter. Where was Hilda?

Where indeed? Where was she?

Anxious eyes explored the assembled company. Most of the young people had mysteriously made off, some this way and some that, but all alike into the friendly embrace of the darkness which lay so thick beyond the glow of the fire. Where was Hilda?

"I think I saw her with the lad—is it Leslie?" said Lynndal Barry.

"Oh—Leslie," repeated Mrs. Needham.

"You didn't notice which way they went?" asked the minister.

"No, I'm afraid I didn't."

Then Louise came to the rescue. She pointed miserably, yet also with a faint, new fact-facing grimness, toward the lake.

"They haven't taken out the canoe ...!" Alfred Needham was horror struck.

"It's perfectly calm, papa," Louise reminded him dryly.

Then, indeed, they saw the canoe, on the moonlit water. Both Leslie and Hilda were paddling. But they were not exactly paddling toward the shore.

"She knows it's not allowed, out like this at all hours of the night!" cried the minister.

But his wife reassured him in her gentle way. "Alf, I wouldn't worry. Leslie will look out for her."

Louise lowered her head. Then she moved almost imperceptibly closer to Lynndal. At length the homeward march was begun. But the Rev. Needham stopped again suddenly, looking at his wife in a helpless way.

"Anna, where's your sister?"

"Dear me!" cried Anna Needham. "We were starting right off without her!"

"Is that Miss Whitcom?" asked Barry.

"Who?"

"Where?"

"The lady just ahead, coming this way."

It was true. There was a lady approaching along the beach. But she was with a man, and the man....

"Alf!" whispered Anna, gripping her husband's arm.

"Well?"

"Oh—look!"

"What is it, Anna?"

She murmured in almost an ecstasy: "Why, he's got his arm right round her waist!"

The awful intelligence that this was indeed Marjory, and that a man had his arm around her waist, smote the minister's consciousness with peculiar and climactic force.

Hilda and Leslie took their own good time about coming in off the lake. It was so wonderful out there in the moonlight.

"I've had a perfectly grand time!" she told him, her voice thrilling richly with conviction. She knew she had had a grand time, and whatever might be the sequel when she faced her parents, the grandness would never, never diminish.

They ascended the slight sand elevation and reached the steps leading up to the porch. Moonlight patched and patterned the steps. They did not go any farther.

Hilda sat down, drawing her knees and chin together, while Leslie whistled softly.

"Will your father be mad?" he asked.

"Oh, no!" the girl exclaimed, with the full and emphatic authority of one who is gravely in doubt. "Why?" she added. "It isn't late, is it?"

Leslie pulled out his watch. "N-o-o. Only twenty after eleven."

"Twenty after eleven? Twenty after eleven! Oh, my goodness! I didn't have any idea it was so late. It seemed as though we were only out there a couple of minutes!"

"It did to me, too," admitted Leslie.

The lateness of the hour, however, appeared to exert no immediate influence upon either his recognition of the wisdom of departure or hers of withdrawal to bed. Leslie swung back and forth, clinging to a slender birch tree which grew quite close to the cottage. Its silver leaves crashed gently together, as though a breeze were thrusting its way through.

"I could simply sit out here all night!" Hilda declared.

Leslie admitted he could too. Presently he did sit down. He sat down beside Hilda, but, as before, one step below her. It was certainly a lovely night. His head somehow found her knee; then Eros could hardly contain himself! Hilda ran her fingers very lightly through his hair. They did not bother to talk much.

At length he asked: "Shall we go out after raspberries tomorrow? Would you like to?"

"Oh, Les—that would be lots of fun!"

"All right."

"Shall we take a lunch so we won't have to hurry?"

"Good idea."

"What time will you come, Les?"

"What time do you want me?"

"Oh—I don't know."

"Right after breakfast?"

"Oh, yes!" Her answer to this question held no slightest inflection of doubt.

"What time do you have breakfast?"

"Never later than eight o'clock, and it only takes me a minute to eat!"

Leslie appeared to have forgotten all about going back to the city, after all....

There was another warm silence. The boy had no idea of starting for his own cottage, nor had Hilda any idea of going to bed. It didn't, for some strange reason, occur to either that the parent Needhams might be waiting up in there, and that the minister, harassed over dim prospects of ruin perceived in the relationship of his daughter and the man who handled the Western interests, was attaining an attitude of really appalling austerity. No, they didn't bother their spoony young heads about any of these things, until all at once the cottage door opened, letting out upon them a flood of light from the living room.

"Hello, papa!" cried Hilda, guiltily and very affectionately. She jumped up.

The Rev. Needham did not say much out on the porch; but when Leslie had crept off, after hurriedly squeezing the girl's hand, and Hilda had been marshalled within, the law was laid down with unusual vigour. Mrs. Needham took it all rather more quietly, primarily because she did not share, in its full poignancy, her husband's alarm over Louise. Of course she was concerned. But the poise of climax was beginning to assert itself. No doubt tomorrow, if a reign of chaos really did set in, Mrs. Needham would rule over the turmoil like a very judge. She would become dominant, as when she went to rescue her daughter from the Potomac. It was perhaps her only complex.

Hilda had just been sent up to bed, rather subdued, but in her heart immensely radiant, when Marjory arrived home. O'Donnell wanted to hang around awhile, but she wouldn't let him. No, she positively refused to linger any longer in the moonlight. She reproved herself a little. She reproved him a little, too. They had already been quite romantic enough for one night. And she hustled him off with a lack of ceremony which went with her years and her temperament. All the same, he managed to steal a glancing kiss. And Eros—who I forgot to say had remained in hiding out there—Eros told himself that this was infinitely better for his purposes than a mere handshake!

When he had gone, she sat down on the steps alone, for a moment. It was so wonderful—life was—and the night. She watched the moon declining over a just-troubled sea. Then abruptly she became conscious of voices in the cottage living room.

"Now, your sister!"

"Well, Alf?"

"She's still out!"

"Oh, Marjory knows the way."

"But at such an hour!"

"It's only a quarter to twelve, Alf."

"I know how the Point will be talking tomorrow!"

"Alf, I—"

"Oh—I've nothing to say. No, Anna, I realize she's your sister. But I must tell you what I think." And he was back once more on the topic that so turbulently absorbed him. "I think Marjory has been led into an unfortunate way of living. She's always run so free and never cared what people thought or said. I really don't know how the Point is going to take her." And after a moment's pause, during which the minister could be heard pacing up and down: "Anna, what do we know about the nature of her life in Tahulamaji? Has she told you anything definitely about that? No. But she's hinted...." He paced on, and presently added: "Now here she is, just back; and the very first thing she does is walk all over with a man's arm round her!"

Miss Whitcom abandoned the wonderful night. When she entered, her sister smiled and brightened generally. But her brother-in-law seemed rather taken off his feet.

Marjory wanted to make the minister feel perfectly at home, so she sat down and began rocking cosily.

"How snug you're fixed here!" she murmured. "How happy you ought to be, Alfred, in your little nest! Ah, it's fine to be in the bosom of a family again. You know, I feel somehow as though I'd come back from an absence of nearly a lifetime. It's a curious feeling, to come back like this. Like a sort of prodigal, Alfred—just fancy! But I did have to go away," she pleaded earnestly. "In the beginning, it was quite necessary! You see there were such a lot of things I wanted to find out, and I felt from the very first—Anna, you remember how I used to talk to you about life, and all that?—well, I somehow felt I shouldn't find out anything just sitting in the front parlour with a family album spread open on my lap. You see, it wasn't what the others were like that I wanted to be like, and it wasn't what all the others had done that I wanted to do in the world. So I broke away. Yes, the prodigal left, to roam far and wide. Now that we're chatting here all snug, I may tell you, Alfred, that it's been pretty interesting and pretty broadening."

"Marjie, dear—"

"Now, Anna, don't let's go up to bed just yet. Not just yet. It is so cosy down here, and I'm much too excited to sleep. Just a little while. I—I want to visit with Alfred a little about my life in Tahulamaji." The atmosphere in the living room grew subtly electric. The minister sat rigid. But the speaker went on in a cheery, simple way: "Just think, just think! When you would be sitting down in your nice house in Ohio, there I was...." She interrupted herself with a laugh. "It does sound rather dreadful, now doesn't it? You in Ohio and me.... Fancy my going way off there alone—for you know the Tahulamajians were once cannibals!—all by myself, and—and living! Gracious, how extraordinary it does sound!"

She rocked with folded arms and peeped at her brother-in-law out of the wicked corners of her eyes.

"But it's such fun," she went on, a little solemnly, "keeping your personal life all ship-shape—all ship-shape, Alfred—and yet really feeling, as you go along, that you're not missing a single thing that's worth while. No, not a single blessed thing, Alfred. When I went to Tahulamaji I hadn't an awfully clear notion of what I was going to do there. You see I thought I'd just have a look-around, as we say. Oh, Alfred," she chatted, "such a lovely spot! So warm and tropical, with music at night over the water.... Alfred, how you would love it there!"

He shifted uneasily, and she went on: "What I did, though—what my life in Tahulamaji really turned out to be—wasn't after all very poetic, or even essentially tropical, when it comes to that. Yes, I've often thought I might have chosen a more harmonious vocation. But one must grasp what one can and be content. The fact is, Alfred, I went into the drygoods business."

"Drygoods!" cried her sister.

"Yes—just think of that—and after all the really exciting things I've done in my life! But that's exactly what I did, Anna. Yes, that's what my life was in Tahulamaji. And you've simply no idea how the thing took! The natives, you see, were just beginning to wear clothes—regular clothes, I mean, dear brother. And in a few months I had an establishment—an establishment, I tell you, with departments and counters and clerks.... It was perfectly beautiful to see them skipping about, and the little cash boxes running on their tracks overhead...."

"Marjie, really?"

"Yes, indeed. Of course that came just a little later on, after electricity had been introduced. The arrangement was somewhat crude, but it worked. Anna, you've no idea the things you can do if you really set your heart on them! Yes, in time we even had cash boxes overhead, and there was I, up in the cage where all the cash boxes went to, making change and keeping the books! That's what makes me laugh so, when I think of it: you living in your nice house in Ohio, and me up in the little cage with the cash coming in by trolley!"

"Marjory, Marjory!"

"The third year I had a dressmaker over from San Francisco, and the business trebled at once. The poor dears had been trying to make their own clothes, but of course they didn't know much about styles. I had a circulating library of pattern books, but it was a great day, I tell you, when the dressmaker arrived! They closed the schools, and a reception was held. Even the Queen came down the line! I have a manager now," she concluded, "running the business. I said I simply had to get off for a rest. Alfred," she soared to her climax, "your sister has worked herself weary and rich. How much will the new parish house cost?"

The Rev. Needham gasped. This is really not an exaggeration. He gasped—and it was, this time, no merely inner gasping, either. Marjory—the new parish house ...!

"Why, Marjory!" he cried, his heart deeply touched. There sounded again here that former note of appeal or even pathos.

Nevertheless, long afterward, when the fine new parish house was all finished, and the church could hold its own a little while longer in a world which was changing so rapidly, a grim spectre stalked between the minister and her magnificent donation. It was the spectre of the Bishop whose bed she had seen made up. Did Marjory think he would sleep on two mattresses, like the Bishop? And buy an upper for his golf sticks?

Miss Whitcom had risen to bid them good night. The indignant cottage lamp had begun to sputter and fail. It had never before been kept burning so late. But she lingered long enough to give them the full benefit of one of her delightful and so characteristic shafts of bluntness.

"O'Donnell," she said, "has stood by all these years. Think of it! Think of its taking so long as that to be sure! Of course it wasn't that I ever cared two straws for anybody else. O'Donnell's never had any active competition, except from my overwhelming notions about being free to work out my life. Well, I've had my freedom, and I've worked it out. And now—well, he's asked me again—tonight. But what do you think? I haven't given him a definite answer yet—not yet! I'm going over to the Elmbrook Inn as soon as the sun's up, though. I guess I'll stand down under his window and call out to him softly. And when he comes to the window, I'll say: 'Barrett, I've had my fling!' Alfred—you don't think I could find my way through tonight ...?"

"Marjory! Of course not! Tomorrow, if you must...."

But she chattered gaily and unquenchably on. "I don't know how it's all going to turn out, I'm sure—about our future, I mean. You see, if he'll come along to Tahulamaji, I'll sell him a half interest in the business, and we could let the manager go. But I doubt if he'll do it. It's so far, and then, you see, he's been with the Babbits so long. I can fancy one's growing very much attached to the Babbits!"

"And if he doesn't want to go to Tahulamaji?" asked her sister.

"If he doesn't? If he doesn't? Well, then I'll have to follow his lead."

The Rev. Needham had a sudden flash of wholly disorganizing inspiration. "Marjory, you don't mean Babbit & Babbit?"

But it was just exactly what she did mean! "Yes, in that case I'll travel for Babbit & Babbit. Must be doing something, I can tell you, with all these parish houses to be built! And it won't be my first job on the road, by any manner of means, either!"

Then she kissed her sister affectionately on the mouth and her brother-in-law affectionately on the cheek. And then the cottage lamp went out.

8

When Hilda went up to bed she thought Louise already asleep, for she lay there with her eyes closed. Hilda undressed as stealthily as possible, and crept in beside her sister. At first she felt so excited that it seemed to her she must surely lie awake all night. But as a matter of fact, her eyes drooped at once, and in five minutes she was asleep.

Then it was that Louise stirred and opened her eyes. They were very wide and very full of perplexity. She had not been sleeping, but had feigned sleep because she dreaded the ordeal of talking. She wanted to be alone, and she wanted to think—all night. A feverish zeal was upon her.

Barry was abed too. His light had gone out and his room was quite silent. Was he asleep? She wondered. Or was he, too, lying there in the dark with eyes wide open, thinking?

The walk back from the roast had been a very silent one. The day had been crowded with emotion, and during the journey back to Beachcrest the tenseness had seemed, curiously, to be eased a little. At least there seemed a tacit understanding that, whatever the further developments might be, tomorrow must do. Tomorrow, tomorrow! Tonight all was hazed and half drowned in unshed, groping tears. Even emotion itself, through sheer, blessed weariness, was subtly obscured. So the walk had been silent, while somehow both had felt as though the air had cleared a little. It was easier to breathe.

They had stood together a moment on the porch.

"Goodnight," she said huskily.

"Goodnight, Louise," he returned gravely, giving her hand just a frank, brief pressure.

She wanted to throw herself at his feet. The impulse to do something splendid and expiating swept over her almost irresistibly. She wanted to implore his forgiveness—would that set their lives in order? If this were to be the end, she felt there ought to be something at least vaguely stupendous about it.

"Louise, dear—what is it?" he asked, quite tenderly and calmly, yet with an intensity, too, which seemed like a hot, reproachful breath against one's very soul.

She swayed a little, almost as though she might be about to fall in a faint. He touched her arm gently.

The opportunity passed. "It's nothing," she murmured. "I'm tired, that's all—so tired!" And she did not throw herself at his feet, or do anything splendid at all.

It was true, she was very tired. She expected to drop at once into a merciful drugged sleep. It had been like that after the affair with Richard. But now, lo! she found herself more wide awake, it seemed, than she had ever been. The weariness seemed all slipping from her, and her mind grew quite vibrant, as with a slowly dawning purpose.

Ah, tomorrow!

Would the situation be as tragic then? Could it be otherwise than tragic? But perhaps—perhaps they would see things more clearly....

"Yes," she thought, "I'll go to sleep now and let tomorrow bring what it must."

MaÑana, maÑana!

But this was not to be. She closed her eyes. She tried to turn into a snug and sleepy position. But she could not woo sleep; and every effort merely sharpened her senses. Again she found herself lying in the dark with wide eyes, and went on thinking, thinking.

What was the meaning of this strange commotion? Phantoms—of the past—presaging phantoms endlessly to follow.... At dawn she had gone out blithely enough to welcome her lover. He had come. And then.... But even before his coming, that curious battle had set in. Not his hat or the twist of his profile.... Phantoms. Phantoms rising up in her heart like some sinister cloud of retribution. And their single adversary: "You are mine, all mine...."

Now, in this sombre hour shunned by sleep, the conflict achieved an effect of climax: she felt it to be that, obscurely yet with a desperate poignancy—felt that an issue precious in the scheme of her unfolding destiny faced decision. Legions of spent loves went by in marshalled battle trim. With an inward cry she watched them as they passed. Perfume still lingering in the house, though with the guest departed. Ghosts of a many-vizaged passion, homing at length, for the fulfilment of a barter Faust-like in its essence.

How lavish she had always been: how free! Shambles, now the glamour was gone stale. A monstrous cheapening—a heart flung out to-let in a public street. Yes, how easily and extravagantly she had spent herself—a profligate spending, for what the moment could return. Here, at last, was a love that demanded: "You must be mine, all mine—you must belong to me forever!" Curious, that of them all—of all the voices that had spoken of love before—it should be Lynndal's which, in fancy, thus first framed a so momentous contract!

He had been always so modest; in the beginning, to be loved in return had figured for him as a too, too generous conjecture. Gradually, however, there had been a return. Their lives had drawn together. The fact that this love had, from almost the very beginning, been challenged to the bridging of such distance began to assume for Louise a new and arresting significance. There had been something in it, in its very fibre, rising above any mere convenience of contact: a phenomenon unique, it struck her, in the long and turbulent history of her heart interests. Those letters.... "That was just it," she had groped when confronted by Aunt Marjie. Romancing appeared to have carried her far, how far! Mirage. And yet, behind the mirage a something deeper lurked. She sensed this now; but all the weary day she had sensed it also, dimly. Lynndal. Hitherto, the man himself had barely figured. Yet ever he had been there, too. He had come from far in the west to put a ring on her finger, and had found her in a panic of goblin doubt. That fancied voice in the shriek of steam: "Mine—mine!" Then the kiss which exposed her dilemma. But behind these things—the man; the man himself. And what was this that seemed for so long, in a fine and utter silence, to have been building? Sanctuary!...

Her mind, as she lay here in the dark, became indeed a battleground for this ultimate climax of struggle. An unimagined realm they made of it. Her heart beat faster and her cheeks grew hot. To-let, in a public street. "Richard! I have done what he would have done—what he did! I am no better—no better!" She writhed, and the bitterness did not leave her—carried her instead to a yet more awful conclusion: "I am no better than a—than a—" The terrible word scorched across her heart, leaving a scar behind. Sobs shook her body, and the tears were bitter tears of hopelessness and regret.

But then, slowly, the bitterness eased a little; and, full of amazement, she felt a shy presence of freshness stealing mysteriously in, as from some empire where struggle is no citizen. A strange and beautiful sense of disentanglement. In the previous moment of unwithheld relentless purgatory, she had caught the rhythm of that something—that something behind the mirage! So that, in time, as she lay relaxed, with tears undried on her face, it came to her that just one fact remained, of all the febrile facts which, out of a long inglorious past, had attained the immortality of ghost-hood. Just one—one "living" fact: Lynndal!

Until today he had but filled a niche—but carried on the pattern of the many; now, however, the power to stem this ruinous tide revealed itself as at hand, just waiting to be seized—the courage to give herself completely, and to achieve a love as steadfast and unchanging as his had proved to be.

The night wore on. The moon grew sleepy and drooped in the starry western sky. But Louise did not sleep. There was high drama in her heart, and she could not sleep till it was all played out.

She began laying plans. What would her life be like if she married Lynndal? Dry-farming. But later he would run for Congress—perhaps he would be Governor some day. And in the meantime, love—and there would perhaps be children.... Security! Peace! An anchorage—something to steady her and set her wayward heart at rest!

"I'm the kind of girl," she told herself, with a grimness which still went hand in hand with the orgy of honesty and fearless insight that had been making these dark hours so memorable, "—the kind that must be married. I—I'm not safe otherwise—not to be trusted."

And then her mood lightened again a little and grew grimly whimsical: "They say a minister's children are always the worst!"

She must have fallen into a little sleep; for she opened her eyes with a start and gazed up at a slight abrasion in the shingle roof through which morning blinked. For a moment she wondered why she had waked so early. The July birds were all aflutter outside. It was a radiant summer dawn.

Hilda lay beside her, sound asleep. The house was very still. It was tomorrow!

Downstairs on the mantelpiece in the cottage living room the Dutch clock was ticking in its wiry, indignant way. There came a whirr—so like a wheeze of decrepitude. And then it struck: one, two, three, four....

Very quietly Louise slipped out of bed. She did not want to waken Hilda, but she had a sudden desire to be out under the sky.

Quickly putting on her clothes, she stole from the cottage. The morning was very still and fresh. She felt as though she must shout the gladness that was in her. Tomorrow! Who could possibly have foreseen that it would be like this?

Louise climbed up out of the valley toward the little rustic "tea-house" where Leslie had waited for her yesterday at dawn. She thought she would sit there a long, long time, trying to realize her great new contrite happiness. She reached the door. A figure stirred. Lynndal was there. He had risen even before she was awake, for slumber had not come to him at all. When he saw her face, he could not believe the new happiness that seemed rushing upon him out of the dark chaos of their yesterday.

She stretched out her hands to him. She snuggled up against him with a brief, glad sigh. "I want to be yours, all yours, Lynndal," she said softly and just a little humorously. "I want to be yours forever and ever. I don't want to belong to any one but you!"