locked his arms around her, and when the door opened, he
went in ahead of her and pushed open the shutters. The low sun flooded
the room and when Hale turned, June was looking with wild eyes from one
thing to another in the room--her rocking-chair at a window, her sewing
close by, a book on the table, her bed made up in the corner, her
washstand of curly maple--the pitcher full of water and clean towels
hanging from the rack. Hale had gotten out the things she had packed
away and the room was just as she had always kept it. She rushed to him,
weeping.

"It would have killed me," she sobbed. "It would have killed me."
She strained him tightly to her--her wet face against his cheek:
"Think--_think_--if I hadn't come now!" Then loosening herself she went
all about the room with a caressing touch to everything, as though it
were alive. The book was the volume of Keats he had given her--which had
been loaned to Loretta before June went away.

"Oh, I wrote for it and wrote for it," she said.

"I found it in the post-office," said Hale, "and I understood."

She went over to the bed.

"Oh," she said with a happy laugh. "You've got one slip inside out," and
she whipped the pillow from its place, changed it, and turned down the
edge of the covers in a triangle.

"That's the way I used to leave it," she said shyly. Hale smiled.

"I never noticed that!" She turned to the bureau and pulled open a
drawer. In there were white things with frills and blue ribbons--and she
flushed.

"Oh," she said, "these haven't even been touched." Again Hale smiled
but he said nothing. One glance had told him there were things in that
drawer too sacred for his big hands.

"I'm so happy--_so_ happy."

Suddenly she looked him over from head to foot--his rough riding boots,
old riding breeches and blue flannel shirt.

"I am pretty rough," he said. She flushed, shook her head and looked
down at her smart cloth suit of black.

"Oh, _you_ are all right--but you must go out now, just for a little
while."

"What are you up to, little girl?"

"How I love to hear that again!"

"Aren't you afraid I'll run away?" he said at the door.

"I'm not afraid of anything else in this world any more."

"Well, I won't."

He heard her moving around as he sat planning on the porch.

"To-morrow," he thought, and then an idea struck him that made him
dizzy. From within June cried:

"Here I am," and out she ran in the last crimson gown of her young
gir