So do I. Jove, how I'd like it! I haven't had enough of you to satisfy
me for many a moon. And there's no trying to get it, except by running
away like this."

"We ought to do it oftener."

"We ought, but we can't. At least we couldn't. Perhaps now--"

He broke off, staring across the valley where the lake lay to the
distant hills, smoky blue and purple in spite of the clear sunlight
which lay upon them.

"Perhaps now--what?"

"Well--I might not be able to keep up my activity forever, and the time
might come when I should have to take less work and more rest."

"But you said 'now.'"

"Did I? I was just looking ahead a bit. Len, are you hungry, or shall we
wait a while for lunch?"

"Don't you want a little sleep before you eat? You haven't had too much
of it lately."

"It would taste rather good--if I might take it with my head in your
lap."

She arranged her own position so that she could maintain it comfortably,
and he extended his big form at full length upon the rug he had brought
up from the car and upon which she was already sitting. He smiled up
into her face as he laid his head upon her knees, and drew one of her
hands into his. "Now your little boy is perfectly content," he said.

* * * * *

It was an hour before he stirred, an hour in which Ellen's eyes had
silently noted that which had escaped them hitherto, a curious change in
his colour as he lay with closed eyes, a thinness of the flesh over the
cheek bones, dark shadows beneath the eyes. Whether he slept she could
not be sure. But when he sat up again these signs of wear and tear
seemed to vanish at the magic of his smile, which had never been
brighter. Nevertheless she watched him with a new sense of anxiety,
wondering if there might really be danger of his splendid physique
giving way before the rigour of his life.

She noted that he did not eat heartily at lunch, though he professed to
enjoy it; and afterward he was his old boyish self for a long time. Then
he grew quiet, and a silence fell between the pair while they sat
looking off into the distance, the October sunlight on their heads.

And then, quite suddenly, something happened.

"Red! What is the matter?" Ellen asked, startled.

In spite of the summer warmth of the spot in which they sat her
husband's big frame had begun to quiver and shake before her very eyes.
Evidently he was trying hard to control the strange fit of shivering
which had seize