would never see, whose lives she would never be able to emulate. The sweet breezes unknown to the cities blew in her window, the untarnished lustre of the rural moon fell upon her bed, but she heeded not these things, unconscious of their richness, finding in them only cause for a besetting melancholy.

But this craving, Clarkson sensed, was not the real reason for Mrs. Thomas's elopement. Thousands of country girls, he knew, had experienced this same environmental dissatisfaction and outgrown it, cast it off with the passing of youth and youth's romanticisms. Thomas, he decided, had been responsible. Their relationship had been no fleeting, rustic intimacy, forgotten when the stranger resought his home.

"Her parents," Arthur Lee had said, "were very kind to her. The boy they wanted her to marry was popular and had a great future in the district. I've heard that she liked him very much."

But what was that "liking" to Eleanor when that charming emissary of another world walked in the quiet, violet nights with her, when she saw the kindness and joy in his eyes, the wonder, there, of her being with him? She never could understand him, felt her ignorance of his strange words, was continually silent. But she found speech in their embraces, gave herself with rapture.

Clarkson played with his fancies; perhaps it had not all happened just this way, but she had at least known a relentless absorption, so violent that she forsook her parents and the good fortune promised her. He admired her for it, so few he had known with such passion and courage.

Two years before, Thomas had died, and his wife had returned to Fair Hollow. Clarkson had wondered why.

"She believes that the cities, with all their excitement," Arthur told him, "are for the young, but when middle age came she wanted the repose of this life."

"How fine it is," he thought, lying there on the knoll, "to have discovered the youthful rhapsody of this woman!"

The color of life! So infinitely productive of pleasure it was, when studied in the lives of others, so linked with deep joys and deeper sorrows as he thought of his own career. The continuous advance of his years more and more vouchsafed to him the pleasure of that objective study; less and less could he feel the

boisterous happinesses and the rendering disparagements of youth. The mists of early morning had now disappeared, the glare of the sun was bright upon the land. He felt the solace of his shaded retreat. The impressions in his brain became indistinct, and he surrendered himself to the luxury of the sun's somnolent blaze. He fell asleep.

When he awoke, he knew not how much later, Natalie was sitting beside him, regarding the hills. It was the first time that she had sought him out of her own accord. His thought reverted to her former conduct; in the light of that this seemed an omen and an opportunity.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, raising himself and straightening his attire.

She turned and smiled-a comradely smile. This girl, when she was agreeable, struck him as just that-a comrade. She assumed the relationship of nature to nature between them, oblivious of his seniority, and at times he felt uncomfortable, as though she were wiser than he.

"Not very long," she answered.

He felt it necessary to apologize for his attitude.

"This is a fine way for me to be working!"

"I think you were doing just the right thing."

"Would you do it, you with all your youth and vivacity?" "Oh, I often do."

They regarded each other quizzically. Then he lay back, sighing, crossing his hands beneath his head.

"When I was young I spent very little time lying under the trees, asleep," he declared.

She smiled again, and turned her face to the breeze.

"Perhaps we're different."

Clarson was at loss for an answer. He thought of the secretary in the parlor, full of fine books, the property of the girl's father. Montaigne was there, and Shakespeare, and Hardy, and countless others.

"Do you read much?" he asked her.

"Hardly ever."

This surprised him. He had imagined her as full of the lore of

literature, as reading anything to relieve what must have seemed to her the monotony of this life. Temperamentally she was like her mother, he had decided, and her mother had advised the city and its bustle and change for the diversion of youth.

"Don't you care to read?"

"Oh yes, but not enough to read constantly, in the sense that you mean."

Now was the time for him to probe, but he must do it gently. "What do you do, then? You must have some hobby, or way to pass the time."

Natalie appeared to resent his insinuation of laxity.

"I help mother, and do various little things. Most of the time I spend out here in the open."

There came into Clarkson's mind the idea that she was withholding something. Later on, if asked to tell what the source of the idea was, he would not have been able to give a coherent answer, yet there was a premonition of the insidious, perhaps in the elaborate nonchalance of her voice, perhaps from some secret oracle in the air. He had to consider, of course, whatever part Arthur played, but Arthur saw her only a small part of the time; there were the great majority of her waking hours still to account for. It seemed stranger and stranger to Clarkson that she apparently relished this ideal existence when she had been born and nurtured in urban surroundings, with opportunity for all those gaieties so indispensable to most young girls.

"You care for the country, then?" he observed.

"I love it!"

She spoke the words with gusto, looking hard at him, her eyes flashing, lips parted, and that fine arrogance was manifested, that concentration on her own enthusiasms, whatever they were. Then her face softened, there was a delicate play of shadow upon it from the branches, and looking the most adolescent and most ingenuous that he had seen her, she said, "You seem rather interested in me!"

"I am," was all that Clarkson replied, and he felt the miserable inadequacy of his statement. Natalie's mood changed again, and she sat as he had first seen her upon awakening, looking down

from the knoll with a silent excitement, and something of anticipation, he decided, in her demeanor.

Then, as they remained there, there came to Clarkson an impulse; the thought of how endlessly satisfying it would be to have some such mercurial, mysterious personality as this in his own home, as a sort of ward or adopted daughter. The desire for this seemed to him quite abstract, he did not realize that the entire conception proceeded out of the charm of Natalie, that no other girl would have aroused his wish. He was too wrapped up in his inspiration for that. It would be a happy recreation for him in these later years to observe such an essentially subtle character, perhaps to cultivate certain phases of it. The essence of splendid femininity was in Natalie, he knew; it would permeate his life, lend a distinctive joy to it. The sensitive characteristics common to all fine women were forever pleasurable to imaginative men, whether evinced in lover, wife, or daughter. He had known the first two, and now some part of a stifled parental instinct raised its voice and suggested the possibilities of the third.

But the fallacy in his ideas soon became apparent, and he admitted to himself that these discoverings he was making in the meanderings of his mind revolved about Natalie, that what set all his thoughts in motion was just that element in herself which was intensely different from any other person, was, furthermore, enhanced by this provoking void in her existence which he could not fill. There were two women, each of whom had exerted a unique influence over him. Margaret he had loved and lost, the second he had made his wife, and in the felicity of that kinship the years had slipped by, until she was taken from him. Now he thought he had found a third, one who stirred him again, and differently.

"Don't you ever want to go back to town?" he asked her, as though their conversation had never been interrupted.

She seemed not at all taken aback by his continuation on the theme of her preferences, as though she too had been giving it thought.

"No, I don't. Mother's been trying to get me to live with one of my uncles for over a year now. She wants me to make a wealthy marriage, I suppose. But I haven't any wish to."

So the girl had plenty of opportunities to stay in the city, and refused them! Here, in the reason for her refusal, was a great clue, probably the answer itself! And the overheard discussion was explained.

"I don't understand it."

He pursued his course, but the soft clangor of a bell floated up to them, their call to the mid-day meal.

"Maybe I'll tell you why, some time," said Natalie, gravely, as they rose.

In the last words that Natalie had spoken upon the knoll Clarkson recognized a beacon guiding him more certainly to that dim shore he now realized he had for some time been approaching. For her manner of saying them had struck him as indicative of a desire, on her part, for the disclosure of confidences, a tremor in the shrouds around about her life, as though they would yet be lifted, his eyes be allowed to fall upon their secret. He was astounded by this-he realized how difficult it had been for her to suggest as much, to permit even that equivocal half-promise to escape her lips. Perhaps she had experienced a sudden enlightenment as to the nature of his curiosity-born of a serious regard for her and a wish for her welfare. Surely that must have been the case; he could not imagine her, discreet as she was, impelled by mere generosity toward his spectator's rôle. Had he been less personally attracted to Natalie it might have seemed to him that she was the aggressor, trying to arouse herself to the act of confessing to him whatever it was that she had to confess, finding in him the potential sympathy and oasis of understanding that she had sought in vain.

But he neglected that possibility, so flattering to the effect of his character upon her-an effect he felt to be negligible even if not negative-perhaps because he failed to place the true measure of importance on the lack of intimacy between the girl and her mother, as well as on the absence of close associates of Natalie's own age.

Throughout the following day he was bothered by uncertainty and by that conscientious affliction of the sympathetic-the desire to be at once of service where they perceive their attentions wel