The snow lay late the next year on the Madison campus. It had been a busy winter for Sylvia, though in all ways a happy one. When it became known that she was preparing for college all the Buckeye Lane folk were anxious to help. Professor Kelton would not trust his own powers too far and he availed himself of the offers of members of the faculty to tutor Sylvia in their several branches. Buckeye Lane was proud of Sylvia and glad that the old professor found college possible for her. Happiness reigned in the cottage, and days were not so cold or snows so deep but that Sylvia and her grandfather went forth for their afternoon tramp. There was nothing morbid or anæmic about Sylvia. Every morning she pulled weights and swung Indian clubs with her windows open. A mischievous freshman who had thrown a snowball at Sylvia's heels, in the hope of seeing her jump, regretted his bad manners: Sylvia caught him in the ear with an unexpected return shot. A senior who observed the incident dealt in the lordly way of his kind with the offender. They called her "our co-ed" and "the boss girl" after that. The professor of mathematics occasionally left on his blackboard Sylvia's demonstrations and pointed them out to his class as models worthy of their emulation.
Spring stole into the heart of the Wabash country and the sap sang again in maples and elms. Lilacs and snowballs bloomed, and Professor Kelton went serenely about among his roses. Sylvia passed her examinations, and was to be admitted to Wellesley without conditions,—all the Lane knew and rejoiced! The good news was communicated to Mrs. Owen, who wrote at once to Professor Kelton from the summer headquarters she had established on her farm in northern Indiana that just then required particular attention. It ran:—
I want you to make me a visit. Sylvia must be pretty tired after her long, busy year and I have been tinkering the house here a little bit so you can both be perfectly comfortable. It's not so lonely as you might think, as my farm borders Lake Waupegan, and the young people have gay times. My niece, Mrs. Bassett, has a cottage on the lake only a minute's walk from me. I should like Marian and Sylvia to get acquainted and this will be easy if only you will come up for a couple of weeks. There are enough old folks around here, Andrew, to keep you and me in countenance. I inclose a timetable with the best trains marked. You leave the train at Waupegan Station, and take the steamer across the lake. I will meet you at any time you say.
So it happened that on a June evening they left the train at Waupegan and crossed the platform to the wheezy little steamer which was waiting just as the timetable had predicted; and soon they were embarked and crossing the lake, which seemed to Sylvia a vast ocean. Twilight was enfolding the world, and all manner of fairy lights began to twinkle at the far edges of the water and on the dark heights above the lake. Overhead the stars were slipping into their wonted places.
"You can get an idea of how it is at sea," said her grandfather, smiling at her long upward gaze. "Only you can hardly feel the wonder of it all here, or the great loneliness of the ocean at night."
It was, however, wonder enough, for a girl who had previously looked upon no more impressive waters than those of Fall Creek, Sugar Creek, and White River. The steamer, with much sputtering and churning and not without excessive trepidation on the part of the captain and his lone deck hand, stopped at many frail docks below the cottages that hung on the bluff above. Every cottager maintained his own light or combination of lights to facilitate identification by approaching visitors. They passed a number of sailboats lazily idling in the light wind, and several small power boats shot past with engines beating furiously upon the still waters.
"The Bassetts' dock is the green light; the red, white, and blue is Mrs. Owen's," explained the captain. "We ain't stoppin' at Bassett's to-night."
These lights marked the farthest bounds of Lake Waupegan, and were the last points touched by the boat. Sylvia watched the green light with interest as they passed. She had thought of Marian often since their meeting at Mrs. Owen's. She would doubtless see more of her now: the green light and the red, white and blue were very close together.
Mrs. Owen called to them cheerily from the dock, and waved a lantern in welcome. She began talking to her guests before they disembarked.
"Glad to see you, Andrew. You must be mighty hungry, Sylvia. Don't smash my dock to pieces, Captain; it's only wood."
Mrs. Owen complained after a few days that she saw nothing of Sylvia, so numerous were that young person's engagements. Mrs. Bassett and Marian called promptly—the former a trifle dazed by Sylvia's sudden advent, and Marian genuinely cordial. Mrs. Bassett had heard of the approaching visit with liveliest interest. A year before, when Marian had reported the presence in Mrs. Owen's house at Indianapolis of a strange girl with Professor Kelton, her curiosity had been piqued, but she soon dismissed the matter. Marian had carried home little information, and while Mrs. Bassett saw her aunt often on her frequent excursions to the city, she knew by long experience that Mrs. Owen did not yield gracefully to prodding.
Mrs. Bassett had heard all her life of Professor Kelton and she had met him now and then in the Delaware Street house, but her knowledge of him and his family was only the most fragmentary. Nothing had occurred during the year to bring the Keltons again to her attention; but now, with a casualness in itself disconcerting, they had arrived at Mrs. Owen's farmhouse, where, Mrs. Bassett was sure, no guests had ever been entertained before. The house had just been remodeled and made altogether habitable, a fact which, Mrs. Bassett had been flattering herself, argued for Mrs. Owen's increasing interest in herself and her family. The immediate arrival of the Keltons was disquieting.
Through most of her life Hallie Bassett had assumed that she and her children, as Sally Owen's next of kin, quite filled the heart of that admirable though often inexplicable woman. Mrs. Bassett had herself inherited a small fortune from her father, Blackford F. Singleton, Mrs. Owen's brother, a judge of the Indiana Supreme Court and a senator in Congress, whose merits and services are set forth in a tablet at the portal of the Fraser County Court-House. The Bassetts and the Singletons had been early settlers of that region, and the marriage of Hallie Singleton to Morton Bassett was a satisfactory incident in the history of both families. Six years of Mrs. Bassett's girlhood had been passed in Washington; the thought of power and influence was dear to her; and nothing in her life had been more natural than the expectation that her children would enjoy the fortune Mrs. Owen had been accumulating so long and, from all accounts, by processes hardly less than magical. Mrs. Bassett's humor was not always equal to the strain to which her aunt subjected it. Hallie Bassett had, in fact, little humor of any sort. She viewed life with a certain austerity, and in literature she had fortified herself against the shocks of time. Conduct, she had read, is three fourths of life; and Wordsworth had convinced her that the world is too much with us. Mrs. Bassett discussed nothing so ably as a vague something she was fond of characterizing as "the full life," and this she wished to secure for her children. Her boy's future lay properly with his father; she had no wish to meddle with it; but Marian was the apple of her eye, and she was striving by all the means in her power to direct her daughter into pleasant paths and bright meadows where the "full life" is assured. Hers were no mean standards. She meant to be a sympathetic and helpful wife, the wisest and most conscientious of mothers.
Mrs. Bassett was immensely anxious to please her aunt in all ways; but that intrepid woman's pleasure was not a thing to be counted on with certainty. She not only sought to please her aunt by every means possible, but she wished her children to intrench themselves strongly in their great aunt's favor. The reports of such of Mrs. Owen's public benefactions as occasionally reached the newspapers were always alarming. No one ever knew just how much money Sally Owen gave away; but some of her gifts in recent years had been too large to pass unnoticed by the press. Only a few months before she had established a working-girls' home in memory of a daughter—her only child—who had died in early youth, and this crash from a clear sky had aroused in Mrs. Bassett the gravest apprehensions. It was just so much money said to be eighty thousand dollars—out of the pockets of Marian and Blackford; and, besides, Mrs. Bassett held views on this type of benevolence. Homes for working-girls might be well enough, but the danger of spoiling them by too much indulgence was not inconsiderable; Mrs. Bassett's altruism was directed to the moral and intellectual uplift of the mass (she never said masses) and was not concerned with the plain prose of housing, feeding, and clothing young women who earned their own living. Mrs. Owen, in turning over this home to a board of trustees, had stipulated that music for dancing should be provided every Saturday evening; whereupon two trustees, on whom the Christian religion weighed heavily, resigned; but Mrs. Owen did not care particularly. Trustees were only necessary to satisfy the law and to assure the legal continuity of Elizabeth House, which Mrs. Owen directed very well herself.
Mrs. Bassett encouraged Marian's attentions to Mrs. Owen's young visitor; but it must be said that Marian, on her own account, liked Sylvia and found delight in initiating her into the mysteries of Waupegan life. She taught her to ride, to paddle a canoe, and to swim. There were dances at the casino, and it was remarkable how easily Sylvia learned to dance. Marian taught her a few steps on the first rainy day at the Bassett house, and thereafter no one would have doubted that Sylvia had been to dancing-school with the boys and girls she met at the casino parties. Marian was the most popular girl in the summer colony and Sylvia admired her ungrudgingly. In all outdoor sports Marian excelled. She dived from a spring-board like a boy, she paddled a canoe tirelessly and with inimitable grace, and it was a joy to see her at the tennis court, where her nimbleness of foot and the certainty of her stroke made her easily first in all competitions. At the casino, after a hard round of tennis, and while waiting for cakes and lemonade to be served, she would hammer ragtime on the piano or sing the latest lyrical offerings of Broadway. Quiet, elderly gentlemen from Cincinnati, Louisville, and Indianapolis, who went to the casino to read the newspapers or to play bridge, grinned when Marian turned things upside down. If any one else had improvised a bowling-alley of ginger-ale bottles and croquet-balls on the veranda, they would have complained of it bitterly. She was impatient of restraint, and it was apparent that few restraints were imposed upon her. Her sophistication in certain directions was to Sylvia well-nigh incomprehensible. In matters of personal adornment, for example, the younger girl's accomplishments were astonishing. She taught Sylvia how to arrange her hair in the latest fashion promulgated by "Vogue"; she instructed her in the refined art of manicuring according to the method of the best shop in Indianapolis; and it was amazing how wonderfully Marian could improve a hat by the slightest readjustments of ribbon and feather. She tested the world's resources like a spoiled princess with an indulgent chancellor to pay her bills. She gave a party and ordered the refreshments from Chicago, though her mother protested that the domestic apparatus for making ice-cream was wholly adequate for the occasion. When she wanted new tennis shoes she telegraphed for them; and she kept in her room a small library of mail-order catalogues to facilitate her extravagances.
Marian talked a great deal about boys, and confided to Sylvia her sentimental attachment for one of the lads they saw from day to day, and with whom they played tennis at the casino court. For the first time Sylvia heard a girl talk of men as of romantic beings, and of love as a part of the joy and excitement of life. A young gentleman in a Gibson drawing which she had torn from an old copy of "Life" more nearly approximated Marian's ideal than even the actors of her remote adoration. She had a great number of gowns and was quite reckless in her use of them. She tried to confer upon Sylvia scarf pins, ties, and like articles, for which she declared she had not the slightest use. In the purchase of soda water and candy at the casino, where she scribbled her father's initials on the checks, or at the confectioner's in the village where she enjoyed a flexible credit, her generosity was prodigal. She was constantly picking up other youngsters and piloting them on excursions that her ready fancy devised; and if they returned late for meals or otherwise incurred parental displeasure, to Marian it was only part of the joke. She was always late and ingeniously plausible in excusing herself. "Mother won't bother; she wants me to have a good time. And when papa is here he just laughs at me. Papa's just the best ever."
Mrs. Bassett kept lamenting to Professor Kelton her husband's protracted delay in Colorado. He was interested in a mining property there and was waiting for the installation of new machinery, but she expected to hear that he had left for Indiana at any time, and he was coming direct to Waupegan for a long stay. Mrs. Owen was busy with the Waupegan farm and with the direction of her farms elsewhere. On the veranda of her house one might frequently hear her voice raised at the telephone as she gave orders to the men in charge of her properties in central and southern Indiana. Her hearing was perfect and she derived the greatest satisfaction from telephoning. She sold stock or produce on these distant estates with the market page of the "Courier" propped on the telephone desk before her, and explained her transactions zestfully to Professor Kelton and Sylvia. She communicated frequently with the superintendent of her horse farm at Lexington about the "string" she expected to send forth to triumph at county and state fairs. The "Annual Stud Register" lay beside the Bible on the living-room table; and the "Western Horseman" mingled amicably with the "Congregationalist" in the newspaper rack.
The presence of the old professor and his granddaughter at Waupegan continued to puzzle Mrs. Bassett. Mrs. Owen clearly admired Sylvia, and Sylvia was a charming girl—there was no gainsaying that. At the farmhouse a good deal had been said about Sylvia's plans for going to college. Mrs. Owen had proudly called attention to them, to her niece's annoyance. If Sylvia's advent marked the flowering in Mrs. Owen of some new ideals of woman's development, Mrs. Bassett felt it to be her duty to discover them and to train Marian along similar lines. She felt that her husband would be displeased if anything occurred to thwart the hand of destiny that had so clearly pointed to Marian and Blackford as the natural beneficiaries of the estate which Mrs. Owen by due process of nature must relinquish. In all her calculations for the future Mrs. Owen's fortune was an integer.
Mrs. Bassett received a letter from her husband on Saturday morning in the second week of Sylvia's stay. Its progress from the mining-camp in the mountains had been slow and the boat that delivered the letter brought also a telegram announcing Bassett's arrival in Chicago, so that he was even now on his way to Waupegan. As Mrs. Bassett pondered this intelligence Sylvia appeared at the veranda steps to inquire for Marian.
"She hasn't come down yet, Sylvia. You girls had a pretty lively day yesterday and I told Marian she had better sleep a while longer."
"We certainly have the finest times in the world," replied Sylvia. "It doesn't seem possible that I've been here nearly two weeks."
"I'm glad you're going to stay longer. Aunt Sally told me yesterday it was arranged."
"We really didn't expect to stay more than our two weeks; but Mrs. Owen made it seem very easy to do so."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of outstaying your welcome. It's not Aunt Sally's way to bore herself. If she didn't like you very much she wouldn't have you here at all; Aunt Sally's always right straight out from the shoulder."
"Marian has done everything to give me a good time. I want you to know I appreciate it. I have never known girls; Marian is really the first girl I have ever known, and she has taught me ever so many things."
"Marian is a dear," murmured Mrs. Bassett.
She was a murmurous person, whose speech was marked by a curious rising inflection, that turned most of her statements into interrogatories. To Sylvia this habit seemed altogether wonderful and elegant.
"Suppose we take a walk along the lake path, Sylvia. We can pretend we're looking for wild flowers to have an excuse. I'll leave word for Marian to follow."
They set off along the path together. Mrs. Bassett had never seemed friendlier, and Sylvia was flattered by this mark of kindness. Mrs. Bassett trailed her parasol, using it occasionally to point out plants and flowers that called for comment. She knew the local flora well, and kept a daybook of the wildflowers found in the longitude and latitude of Waupegan; and she was an indefatigable ornithologist, going forth with notebook and opera glass in hand. She spoke much of Thoreau and Burroughs and they were the nucleus of her summer library; she said that they gained tang and vigor from their winter hibernation at the cottage. Her references to nature were a little self-conscious, as seems inevitable with such devotees, but we cannot belittle the accuracy of her knowledge or the cleverness of her detective skill in apprehending the native flora. She found red and yellow columbines tucked away in odd corners, and the blue-eyed-Mary with its four petals—two blue and two white—as readily as Sylvia's inexperienced eye discovered the more obvious ladies'-slipper and jack-in-the-pulpit. To-day Mrs. Bassett rejoiced in the discovery of the season's first puccoon, showing its orange-yellow cluster on a sandy slope. She plucked a spray of the spreading dogbane, but only that she might descant upon it to Sylvia; it was a crime, Mrs. Bassett said, to gather wild flowers, which were never the same when transplanted to the house. When they came presently to a rustic seat Mrs. Bassett suggested that they rest there and watch the lake, which had always its mild excitements.
"You haven't known Aunt Sally a great while, I judge, Sylvia? Of course you haven't known any one a great while!"
"No; I never saw her but once before this visit. That was when grandfather took me to see her in Indianapolis a year ago. She and grandfather are old friends."
"All the old citizens of Indiana have a kind of friendship among themselves. Somebody said once that the difference between Indiana and Kentucky is, that while the Kentuckians are all cousins we Hoosiers are all neighbors. But of course so many of us have had Kentucky grandfathers that we understand the Kentuckians almost as well as our own people. I used to meet your grandfather now and then at Aunt Sally's; but I can't say that I ever knew him. He's a delightful man and it's plain that his heart is centred in you."
"There was never any one like grandfather," said Sylvia with feeling.
"I suppose that as he and Aunt Sally are such old friends they must have talked a good deal together about you and your going to college. It would be quite natural."
Sylvia had not thought of this. She was the least guileful of beings, this Sylvia, and she saw nothing amiss in these inquiries.
"I suppose they may have done so; and Mrs. Owen talked to me about going to college when I visited her."
"Oh! If she undertook to persuade you, then it is no wonder you decided to go. She's a very powerful pleader, as she would put it herself."
"It wasn't just that way, Mrs. Bassett. I think grandfather had already persuaded me. Mrs. Owen didn't know of it till afterward; but she seemed to like the idea. Her ideas about girls and women are very interesting."
"Yes? She has a very decided way of expressing herself. I should imagine, though, that with her training and manner of life she might look a little warily at the idea of college training for women. Personally, you understand, I am heartily in favor of it. I have hoped that Marian might go to college. Aunt Sally takes the greatest interest in Marian, naturally, but she has never urged it upon us."
Sylvia gazed off across the lake and made no reply. She recalled distinctly Mrs. Owen's comments on Marian, expressed quite clearly on the day of their drive into the country, a year before. It was not for her to repeat those observations; she liked Marian and admired her, and she saw no reason why Marian should not go to college. Sylvia, guessing nothing of what was in Mrs. Bassett's mind, failed to understand that Mrs. Owen's approval of Marian's education was of importance. Nothing could have been more remote from her thoughts than the idea that her own plans concerned any one but herself and her grandfather. She was not so dull, however, but that she began to feel that Mrs. Bassett was speaking defensively of Marian.
"Marian's taste in reading is very unusual, I think. I have always insisted that she read only the best. She is very fond of Tennyson. I fancy that after all, home training is really the most valuable,—I mean that the atmosphere of the home can give a child what no school supplies. I don't mean, of course, that we have it in our home; but I'm speaking of the ideal condition where there is an atmosphere. I've made a point of keeping good books lying about the house, and the best magazines and reviews. I was never happier than the day I found Marian curled up on a lounge reading Keats. It may be that the real literary instinct, such as I feel Marian has, would only be spoiled by college; and I should like nothing better than to have Marian become a writer. A good many of our best American women writers have not been college women; I was looking that up only the other day."
Sylvia listened, deeply interested; then she laughed suddenly, and as Mrs. Bassett turned toward her she felt that it would do no harm to repeat a remark of Mrs. Owen's that had struck her as being funny.
"I just happened to remember something Mrs. Owen said about colleges. She said that if it isn't in the colt the trainer can't put it there; and I suppose the successful literary women have had genius whether they had higher education or not. George Eliot hadn't a college training, but of course she was a very great woman."
Mrs. Bassett compressed her lips. She had not liked this quotation from Mrs. Owen's utterances on this vexed question of higher education. Could it be possible that Aunt Sally looked upon Marian as one of those colts for whom the trainer could do nothing? It was not a reassuring thought; her apprehensions as to Sylvia's place in her kinswoman's affections were quickened by Sylvia's words; but Mrs. Bassett dropped the matter.
"I have never felt that young girls should read George Eliot. She doesn't seem to me quite an ideal to set before a young girl."
As Sylvia knew nothing of George Eliot, except what she had gleaned from the biographical data in a text-book on nineteenth-century writers, she was unable to follow Mrs. Bassett. She had read "Mill on the Floss," and "Romola" and saw no reason why every one shouldn't enjoy them.
Mrs. Bassett twirled her closed parasol absently and studied the profile of the girl beside her.
"The requirements for college are not really so difficult, I suppose?" she suggested.
Sylvia's dark eyes brightened as she faced her interlocutor. Those of us who know Sylvia find that quick flash of humor in her eyes adorable.
"Oh, they can't be, for I answered most of the questions!" she exclaimed, and then, seeing no response in her inquisitor, she added soberly: "It's all set out in the catalogue and I have one with me. I'd be glad to bring it over if you'd like to see it."
"Thank you, Sylvia. I should like to see it. I may want to ask you some questions about the work; but of course you won't say anything to Marian of our talk. I am not quite sure, and I'll have to discuss it with Mr. Bassett."
"Of course I shan't speak of it, Mrs. Bassett."
Marian's voice was now heard calling them, down the path, and the girl appeared, a moment later, munching a bit of toast stuccoed with jam, and eager to be off for the casino where a tennis match was scheduled for the morning.
"Don't be late for dinner this evening, Marian; your father will be here, and if you see Blackford, be sure to tell him to meet the 3.10."
"Yes, mama, I'll remember, and I'll try to meet the train too." And then to Sylvia, as she led the way to the boathouse to get the canoe, "I'm glad dad's coming. He's perfectly grand, and I'm going to see if he won't give me a naphtha launch. Dad's a good old scout and he's pretty sure to do it."
Marian's manner of speaking of her parents disclosed the filial relationship in a new aspect to Sylvia, who did not at once reconcile it with her own understanding of the fifth commandment. Marian referred to her father variously as "the grand old man," "the true scout," "Sir Morton the good knight," and to her mother as "the Princess Pauline," or "one's mama," giving to mama the French pronunciation. All this seemed to Sylvia to be in keeping with Marian's general precociousness.
Sylvia had formed the habit of stealing away in the long twilights, after the cheerful gathering at Mrs. Owen's supper-table, for a little self-communing. Usually Mrs. Owen and Professor Kelton fell to talking of old times and old friends at this hour and Sylvia's disappearances were unremarked. She felt the joy of living these days, and loved dearly the delaying hour between day and night that is so lovely, so touched with poetry in this region. There was always a robin's vesper song, that may be heard elsewhere than in Indiana, but can nowhere else be so tremulous with joy and pain. A little creek ran across Mrs. Owen's farm, cutting for itself a sharp defile to facilitate its egress into the lake; and Sylvia liked to throw herself down beside a favorite maple, with the evening breeze whispering over the young corn behind her, and the lake, with its heart open to the coming of the stars, quiet before her, and dream the dreams that fill a girl's heart in those blessed and wonderful days when the brook and river meet.
On this Saturday evening Sylvia was particularly happy. The day's activities, that had begun late, left her a little breathless. She was wondering whether any one had ever been so happy, and whether any other girl's life had ever been so pleasantly ordered. Her heartbeat quickened as she thought of college and the busy years that awaited her there; and after that would come the great world's wide-open doors. She was untouched by envy, hatred, or malice. There was no cloud anywhere that could mar; the stars that stole out into the great span of sky were not more tranquil than her own heart. The world existed only that people might show kindness one to another, and that all this beauty of wood, field, water, and starry sky might bring joy to the souls of men. She knew that there was evil in the world; but she knew it from books and not from life. Her path had fallen in pleasant places, and only benignant spirits attended her.
She was roused suddenly by the sound of steps in the path beneath. This twilight sanctuary had never been invaded before, and she rose hastily. The course of an irregular path that followed the lake was broken here by the creek's miniature chasm, but adventurous pedestrians might gain the top and continue over a rough rustic bridge along the edge of Mrs. Owen's cornfield. Sylvia peered down, expecting to see Marian or Blackford, but a stranger was approaching, catching at bushes to facilitate his ascent. Sylvia stepped back, assuming it to be a cottager who had lost his way. A narrow-brimmed straw hat rose above the elderberry bushes, and with a last effort the man stood on level ground, panting from the climb. He took off his hat and mopped his face as he glanced about. Sylvia had drawn back, but as the stranger could not go on without seeing her she stepped forward, and they faced each other, in a little plot of level ground beside the defile.
"Pardon me!" he exclaimed, still breathing hard; and then his eyes met hers in a long gaze. His gray eyes searched her dark ones for what seemed an interminable time. Sylvia's hand sought the maple but did not touch it; and the keen eyes of the stranger did not loosen their hold of hers. A breeze blowing across the cornfield swept over them, shaking the maple leaves, and rippled the surface of the lake. The dusk, deepening slowly, seemed to shut them in together.
"Pardon me, again! I hope I didn't frighten you! I am Mr. Bassett, Marian's father."
"And I am Sylvia Garrison. I am staying—"
"Oh," he laughed, "you needn't tell me! They told me at the supper-table all about you and that you and Marian are fast friends."
"I knew you were coming; they were speaking of it this morning."
They had drawn closer together during this friendly exchange. Again their eyes met for an instant, then he surveyed her sharply from head to foot, as he stood bareheaded leaning on his stick.
"I must be going," said Sylvia. "There's a path through the corn that Mrs. Owen lets me use. They'll begin to wonder what's become of me."
"Why not follow the path to the lane,—I think there is a lane at the edge of the field,—and I will walk to the house with you. The path through the corn must be a little rough, and it's growing dark."
"Yes, thank you, Mr. Bassett."
"I had no idea of meeting any one when I came out. I usually take a little walk after supper when I'm here, and I wanted to get all the car smoke out of my lungs. I was glad to get out of Chicago; it was fiercely hot there."
The path was not wide enough for two and she walked before him. After they had exhausted the heat as a topic, silence fell upon them. He still swung his hat in his hand. Once or twice he smote his stick smartly upon the ground. He timed his pace to hers, keeping close, his eyes upon her straight slender figure. When they reached the lane they walked together until they came to the highway, which they followed to the house. An oil lamp marked the walk that led through Mrs. Owen's flower garden.
"Aren't you coming in, Mr. Bassett?" asked Sylvia, as they paused.
Her hand clicked the latch and the little white-washed gate swung open. In the lamplight their eyes met again.
"I'm sorry, but I must go home. This is the first time I've been here this s