The dust lay thick in Ward Street, sifting its fine powder on the leaves of the cottonwoods that grew at the weedy gutter. The grass in the yard grew long, and the bushes languished in the heat. Judge Blair’s beans clambered up their poles and turned white; and Connie’s sweet peas grew lush and rank, running, as she complained, mostly to leaves. The house seemed to have withdrawn within itself; its green shutters were closed. In the evening dim figures could be seen on the veranda, and the drone of voices could be heard. At eleven o’clock, the deep siren of the Limited could be heard, as it rounded the curve a mile out of town. After that it was still, and night lay on Macochee, soft, vast, immeasurable. The clock in the Court House tower boomed out the heavy hours. Sometimes the harmonies of the singing negroes were borne over the town.

And to Marley and Lavinia those days, and those evenings of purple shadows and soft brilliant stars, were but the setting of a dream that unfolded new wonders constantly. They were but a part of all life, a part of the glowing summer itself, innocent of the thousand artificial demands man has made on himself. Lavinia went about with a new expression, exalted, expectant; a new dignity had come to her and a new beauty; all at once, suddenly, as it were, character had set its noble mark upon her, and about her slender figure there was the aureola of romance.

“Have you noticed Lavinia?” Mrs. Blair asked her husband.

“No, why?” he said, in the alarm that was ever ready to spring within him.

“She has changed so; she has grown so beautiful!”

One morning the judge saw a spar of light flash from her finger, and he peered anxiously over his glasses.

“What’s that, Lavinia?” he asked, and when she stood at his knee, almost like a little girl again in all but spirit, he took her finger.

“A ring,” she said simply.

“What does it mean?”

“Glenn gave it to me.”

“Glenn?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought there was to be no engagement?” The judge looked up, as if there had been betrayal. But Lavinia only smiled. The judge looked at her a moment, then released her hand.

“I wouldn’t wear it where any one could see it,” he said.

The summer stretched itself long into September; and then came the still days of fall, moving slowly by in majestic procession. With the first cool air, a new restless energy awoke in Marley. All the summer he had neglected his studies; but now a change was working in him as wonderful as that which autumn was working in the world. He looked back at that happy, self-sufficient summer, and, for an instant, he had a wild, impotent desire to detain it, to hold it, to keep things just as they were; but the summer was gone, the winter at hand, and he felt all at once the impact of practical life. He faced the future, and for an instant he recoiled.

Lavinia was standing looking up at him. She laid her hand on his shoulder.

“What is it, Glenn?”

“I was just thinking,” he said, “that I have a great assurance in asking you to marry me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, dear, just this: I can’t get a practice in Macochee; I might as well look it in the face now as any time. I have known it all along, but I’ve kept it from you, and I’ve tried to keep it from myself. There’s no place here for me; everybody says so, your father, Wade Powell, everybody. There’s no chance for a young man in the law in these small towns. I’ve tried to make myself think otherwise. I’ve tried to make myself believe that after I’d been admitted I could settle down here and get a practice and we could have a little home of our own—but—”

“Can’t we?” Lavinia whispered the words, as if she were afraid utterance would confirm the fear they imported.

“Well—that’s what they all say,” Marley insisted.

“But papa’s always talking that way,” Lavinia protested. “I suppose all old men do. They forget that they were ever young, and I don’t see what right they have to destroy your faith, your confidence, or the confidence of any young man!” Lavinia blazed out these words indignantly. It was consoling to Marley to hear them, he liked her passionate partizanship in his cause. He longed for her to go on, and he waited, anxious to be reassured in spite of himself. He could see her face dimly in the starlight, and feel her figure rigid with protest beside him.

“It’s simply wicked in them,” she said presently. “I don’t care what they say. We can and we will!”

“I like to have you put it that way, dear,” said Marley. “I like to have you say ‘we’!”

She drew more closely to him.

“And you think we can?” he said presently.

“I know it.”

“And have a little home, here, in one of these quiet streets, with the shade, and the happiness—”

“Yes!”

“And it wouldn’t matter much if we were poor?”

“No!”

“Just at first, you know. I’d work hard, and we could be so happy, so happy, just we two, together!”

“Yes, yes,” she whispered.

“I love Macochee so,” Marley said presently. “I just couldn’t leave it!”

“Don’t! Don’t!” she protested. “Don’t even speak of it!”