"I might stay a week." Anna Darcy spoke to herself, standing at the window of the room where Marget had left her. She looked down upon flowers and out to the southern wall that closed in the valley. The mountains had the tints of desert sands at sunset. They had long wave forms; they were not peaked, nor very high. They were so old, she knew—Appalachians—older than Apennine or Himalaya. They were wearing down here, disintegrating. The weather would be lowering them year by year. They were removing and building elsewhere. They had granaries full of memories, and they must have somewhere, springing like the winter wheat, as many as the blades of wheat, anticipations. Down in the garden she saw marigolds and zinnias, late blooming pansies, mignonette, snapdragon and aster and heliotrope, larkspur, mourning bride, and citronalis. A rosy light bathed garden and fields. This was the back of the house. She saw two or three cabins and a barn, stacked hay, and a rail fence worn and lichened, fostering a growth of trumpet vine and traveler's joy. She heard cow bells. A boy with a good-natured ebony face crossed the path below, carrying two milk pails. Chickens, turkeys, and guineas walked about in the barnyard. From the kitchen, fifty feet from the house, floated a smell of coffee and of bread in the oven. All the place was clean, friendly.

She turned to the large, four-windowed room. The walls had a paper of lavender-gray, on which hung three prints. The bed was a four-poster, with a linen, ball-fringed valance. Books stood ranged above an ancient desk; a blue jug held asters. There was a large closet and—modern blessing—a bathroom, white tubbed, pleasant and light. It had been, she saw, an old dressing room between the two chambers upon this side of the hall, with a door for each. Both doors being ajar, she saw Marget's room, large like this one, furnished not unlike this one. But that, something told her, was really the spare room, and this that she was to dwell in was Marget's room. It had the feel of Marget. "It is the pleasantest, and so she has given it to me."

She bathed and changed her dress. All the time old, happy rhythms ran in her head. Dressed, she sat down by one of the western windows, in the yet warm light. She rested her head against the back of the chair, her eyes closed. She was no longer a young woman, and she had had a tiring year, and it was grateful to her to rest thus. Rest! It was the word, it was the feeling, that was dwelling in this place. Rest, rest, deep rest without idleness.

The air was so rare and fine—mountain air. She remembered that they said that the valley itself lay high. Mountain air. But even while she thought that she had a sudden sense of sea air, fine and strong and drenched with sun.

There would be five or six rooms on this floor. All were large, and the hall between was large. The stairway was very good, the woodwork everywhere good. The ceilings were high. They used lamps and candles. The day had been warm. Fire was not needed. But wood was laid in the fireplace and the wood box beside it held chestnut and pine.

This window gave upon the west. Here were grass and the red and gold trees, and the pebbly beach and the sickle of the water, and the lion-colored fields and the wood through which they had driven, and the amethyst mountains. The sun had set, but the sky stayed aglow. The fatigue went out of the old teacher's face. "'Cast thy bread upon the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee!'" She did not consciously repeat this, but the saying overhung her.

She had slightly opened the door giving upon the hall, so that Marget, returning, might know that she was ready. Stair and hall floor were bare wood. A step sounded upon the one and then upon the other. She was sensitive to the way folk trod. "That is Mr. Linden."

He passed her door and she heard him enter his room across the hall.

Marget presently came for her. "Let us go into the garden until the bell rings." The garden lay spread in breadths of violet brocade. They walked on brick paths and smelled box and mignonette. Then Zinia rang the supper bell.

The two entered the lower hall yet drenched with the afterglow. A man, tall and big framed, turned at their step. "Miss Darcy, this is Mr. Linden." He put out his hand; the visitor laid hers in it. It was a strong hand, likable. His voice, when he spoke, was the voice for the hand. "I am glad to see you, Miss Darcy! Marget and I are glad."

There was light enough to show a strong-featured, clean-shaven face. The eyes were blue-gray. They were not disfigured. She also came to think his face a beautiful one.

They went into the dining room, where two lamps were lighted. The mahogany table had a blue bowl of larkspur. Zinia, in a blue cotton dress and white apron, waited. There were coffee, delicate rolls, a perfection of butter and of cream, a salad, coddled apples, and sugar cakes. Marget sat behind the coffee urn and cups and saucers. Richard Linden did not take the foot of the table, but sat beside her, at the right. She aided him quietly, perfectly, nor did he need as much aid as might be thought. He was so skillful; eyes must be in fingers. Zinia, too, marked his needs, forestalled things. She called him Mr. Dick. She had for him a low, rich, confidential whisper. "The salt, Mr. Dick." "Cottage cheese, Mr. Dick." Marget called him Richard.

The three talked of the ring of this valley and of the ring without and around it, of Miss Darcy's doings and of Sweet Rocket's, and of everybody's. It seemed that papers, magazines, the news, must come here. Earth was the earth of the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century. There was news enough.

Supper over, they went into the parlor that was opposite the dining room, and was no more parlor than library. It stretched around, a big room with old pictures, old furniture, with books. A fire flamed and sang. They sat in the firelight, Richard Linden on one side of the hearth and Marget on the other, and Miss Darcy beside the latter. Still there was talk. The visitor would have gathered where they stood on questions of the day, then suddenly saw that they stood all round and through, and that the day to them was so old and young that it included yesterday and to-morrow. That being so, their solutions were not always those currently offered.

She also found that though they talked they were not talkative. With them conversation became a rhythmic thing—tranquil pause, deep retirement, then again the word. And it startled her almost, how completely they were one.

When they had sat by the fire an hour Marget, rising, put violin music upon a victrola. Hafitz played to them a Hebrew melody; Kreisler played, and Maud Powell. The flames danced, the world heightened. Then, one after the other, came three songs, and between each, as between the violin pieces, they watched the fire, and the forest and the night wind were felt around.

The song ended, the fire burned, they heard the river, the forest was all around. A man's voice was lifted.

Again the wide and deep pause, and then the third song.

Marget shut the victrola. Again they sat in that quiet. It was systole and diastole, it was in and out, and inexpressibly it rested! And that was what she wanted, rest.

Marget lighted a lamp that stood upon the table. Linden said, "Hadn't you rather not read, to-night?"

"No. We won't read long."

He turned to the visitor. "Do you mind listening?"

Miss Darcy was glad to listen. Marget began to read. Her old teacher remembered that she had read well twenty years ago. She read better now. The book was Lafcadio Hearn's West Indies. "We travel so," said Linden. "We take a right journeyer and journey with him."

The fire flickered, then seemed to pass into actual fire of sun. They were in Martinique, under PelÉe, in Saint Pierre, in Grand Anse. Again she was startled to feel how real it was. She touched, she knew, the people of Martinique.

Later, when the book had been closed, when they had said good night, one to the other, when she lay in bed in the dark quiet, she experienced strongly what a certain number of times in her life she had been able to experience faintly. She experienced coherence that was wider than old coherences. She interlocked with this place and her hosts. She held them, they held her. At the end of the week she must go afar. "But never any more so far that I lose the tune—never any more!" She went to sleep with a strange, fair feeling of sea about her. Not that the forest, the hills and mountains, were not there, but she felt the sea likewise. "Of course it is there, but I never thought to look at it or taste it! The sea and mountains and they and me, threaded together, talking together!" She slept.