broad avenue towards home the
town, the universe, was strangely sweet and satisfying. It seemed as
though she had been gone an age--so much had come to her--so thick was
the crowd of new experiences standing between her going and her
return--so swiftly had her mind expanded in these months of vivid city
life. "I'll never go away again," she said to Ben. "This country suits
me."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he answered, softly. In the most
natural way he had put Congdon with Haney in the rear seat and had taken
the place beside Bertha, and this nearness filled her with pleasure and
an unwonted confusion. How big he was! and how splendid his clear,
youthful profile seemed as it gleamed silver-white in the light of the
big street-lamps. Never had his magnetic young body acted upon her so
powerfully, so dangerously. His firm arm touching her own was at once a
delight and a dread. She was all woman at last, awake, palpitant with
love's full-flooding tide--bewildered, dizzy with rapture. Speech was
difficult and her thought had neither sequence nor design.

Fordyce was under restraint also, and the burden of the talk fell upon
Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the
important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along
up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit
palace which they called home.

Ben sprang out first, glad of another opportunity to take Bertha's hand,
a clasp that put the throbbing pain back in her bosom--filling her with
a kind of fear of him as well as of herself--and without waiting for the
Captain she ran up the walk towards the wide doorway where Miss Franklin
stood in smiling welcome.

Her greeting over, the young wife danced about the hall, crying: "Oh,
isn't it big and fine! And aren't you glad it's our own!" She appeared
overborne by a returning sense of security and ownership, and ran from
room to room with all the ecstasy and abandon of a child--but she
stopped suddenly in the middle of her own chamber as if a remorseless
hand were clutching at her heart. "But it is _not_ mine!--I must give it
all up!"

Thrusting this intruding thought away, she hurried back to the library,
where the men were seated at ease, sipping some iced liquor in gross
content.

Haney was beaming. "It makes me over new to sniff this air again," he
was saying. "'Tis a bad plan to let go your hold on mountain air. Me
lungs have contracted a tri