as looking up at her, and there was
a quality in his voice which thrilled her.

"Have I?" she returned quickly. "Well, I can mend it--but there! it's
caught again. I've been trying to get free for--hours."

He smiled.

"You came into the field only twenty minutes ago. I saw you. But, hold
on. I'll uproot this blackberry vine while I'm about it."

He tore it from its tenacious hold to the earth and flung it into the
field. Then he examined the rent in Eugenia's dress.

"If you had waited until I came you might have spared yourself
this--patch," he observed.

"I shan't patch it--and I didn't know you were coming."

"Don't I always come--when there's a patch to be saved?" he asked. "I
hate to see things ruined."

"Then you might have come sooner. There, give me my goldenrod. It's all
scattered."

He began patiently to gather up the stalks, arranging them in an even
layer of equal lengths.

Eugenia watched him, laughing.

"How precise you are!" she said.

"Aren't they right?" He looked up for her approval, and she saw that he
had grown singularly boyish. His face was less rugged, more sensitive.
He wore no hat, and his thick red hair had fallen across his forehead.
She felt the peculiar power of his look as she had felt it before.

"No, they're wrong. They aren't Chinese puzzles. Don't fix them so
tight. Here."

She took them from him, and as his hands touched hers she noticed that
they were cold. "You're shaking them all apart," he protested, "and I
took such a lot of trouble."

As she bent her head his eyes followed the dark coil of hair to the
white nape of her neck where her collar rose. Several loose strands had
blown across her ear and wound softly about the delicate lobe. He wanted
to raise his hand and put them in place, but he checked himself with a
start. With his eyes upon her he recalled the warmth of her woollen
dress, and he wished that he had put his lips to it as he knelt. She
would never have known.

Then, by a curious emotional phenomenon, she seemed to be suddenly
invested with the glory of the sunset. The goldenrod burned at her feet
and on her bosom, and her fervent blood leaped to her face. The next
moment he staggered like a man blinded by too much light--the field,
with Eugenia rising in its midst, flamed before his eyes, and he put out
his hand like one in pain.

"What is it?" she asked quickly, and her voice seemed a part of the
general radiance. "You have been looking at the