THE next day he brought the runabout to the door and honked once—and waited.

Eleanor coming down the path stopped—and glanced at the car. She quickened her steps, a look of happy surprise in her face.

“You are going to drive yourself!”

“Trust me—can’t you?” said Richard.

She got in with a sigh of content. “There are always people!” she said, “and people and people!—till you can’t think!” She threw out her hands in a whimsical gesture.

“Well—you can think now!... No one to hinder!”

They took the road to the open country. And she rested back beside him. He could feel her quiet contentment—though she did not speak—not even when they left the open highway and travelled a rougher road that skirted the hills and came at last to the end of a grass-grown cart-path half-way up the hill. He turned the nose of the car a little one side.

“As far as we go,” he said quietly.

She got out with a smile. “Farther than last time—isn’t it?” She looked about her happily.

“You remember then?” he said. He came and stood beside her.

“Did you think I could forget?”

“It has been a long time——”

“Only a minute,” she replied gayly. “Come—are we going up?”

“I wonder—?” He looked a little doubtfully at the hill before them—and there was a hill beyond that, he knew, and another beyond that.

“It’s more of a climb than I remembered,” he said thoughtfully.

But she was already going on ahead of him, pushing aside the underbrush and walking with light step.... The birch stems came between them and he saw her hazily, always a little ahead, ascending the hill.... Then her pace slowed and he hurried and overtook her.

He looked at her sternly. “Sit down!” he said.

He spread his coat and she sat down on it almost meekly. She was breathing fast. There was a little flush of color in her face.

She looked about her with happy eyes. “Oh—I am glad you thought of it!”

“You have no sense!” said Richard shortly.

“Sense—?... Oh!”

“To hurry like that!—We have the day before us!”

“Have we?” She looked about with a little puzzled vagueness. “I think I must have been hurrying—to get back to set the table for dinner!” She was laughing at him. “It felt like being a girl!” she said.

“I shall go ahead after this,” responded Richard. “I’m not going to have you fainting away or twisting an ankle, or any other silly thing!”

“Nonsense!”

But when they started again he led the way; and they stopped at judicious intervals—to look at the view and talk of scenery—and Richard kept a careful eye on the face with its flitting color, and on her quickened breath. She leaned a little against him the last part of the way. Then they came out on the open bluff, with the country lying before them.

She stood gazing down at it with shining eyes. “Nothing has changed!” she cried after a minute.

“Not from up here,” said Richard. “Sit down.”

He made a place for her by a birch-tree and she leaned back against it and they looked out in silence over the wide country.

Presently he turned and looked at her. She had fallen asleep. Her head rested against the birch-tree and her face wore a soft flush in sleep.... Now that it was quiet and the smile was gone, he could see that it was very tired. A quick desire seized him—to keep the face—to stay the change in it. A woman should not grow old!... And then as he looked at her, he saw that she was more beautiful than she had ever been.

She opened her eyes and smiled to him hazily. “Twenty-five years!” she murmured sleepily, and the eyes closed. He moved a little nearer to her till her head rested against him and she slept on.

When she opened her eyes, the light had changed. She sat up with a swift look.

“How stupid in me—to go to sleep!... But how wonderful it is!” She was gazing at the darkened light that spread like a veil over the country below. The grass and trees were misty in it—only a winding river caught a touch of glamour from an unseen source and glowed through the dusk. The darkness grew and deepened on the plain, and the sides of the hill were blurred in it—shadowy shapes crept up.

“We must go,” said Richard. “The days are short.”

“Yes”—she breathed a little sigh—“yes—we must go.” She got up.

But he stayed her and she stood arrested, looking down at him.

“There—was something—I wanted to tell you,” he said.

She glanced at the plain—with the little gleaming river shining in it. “It is late!” she said.

“I brought my bug-light.” He touched his pocket. “Sit down.”

So she sat down beside him and he told her of the map in his pocket. He took it out and spread it before her. And she leaned toward it in the dim light—studying the discolored lines as he explained them to her.

“Do you want—to go—so much?” she asked, looking up at last.

“If you want to—Yes.”

She was silent a minute.

“Martin thinks he is going to be an engineer,” she said irrelevantly.

He spurned it. “Martin has sense—he doesn’t need his mother—to have sense for him!”

“But an engineer!” she said.

“They will lead the world to-morrow,” he responded.

“Oh—!” It was a little sigh of surprise and relief.

“I didn’t know engineers were anything important!” she added after a minute. Then she laughed out.

The darkness gathered closer—coming up from the plain—and the little river was only a gleam through its veil of haze.

She looked down on it.

“Very well,” she said. “We will go. I am ready to go.... Perhaps it will rest me to go.”