gradually to a better adjustment, and was
very tenderly anxious that Dorothy should see no change in him. He had not
yet reached the point, however, where he would give it all up for the sake
of finding things real again, if only for an hour.

Day after day, his work went on. Sometimes he would spend an hour
searching for a single word, rightly to express his meaning. Page after
page was re-copied upon the typewriter, for, with the nice conscience of a
good workman, Harlan desired a perfect manuscript, at least in mechanical
details.

Finally, he came to the last page and printed "The End" in capitals with
deep satisfaction. "When it's sandpapered," he said to himself, "and the
dust blown off, I suppose it will be done."

The "sandpapering" took a week longer. At the end of that time, Harlan
concluded that any manuscript was done when the writer had read it
carefully a dozen times without making a single change in it. On a
Saturday night, just as the hall clock was booming eleven, he pushed it
aside, and sat staring blankly at the wall for a long time.

"I don't know what I've got," he thought, "but I've certainly got two
hundred and fifty pages of typed manuscript. It should be good for
something--even at space rates."

After dinner, Sunday, he told them that the book was ready, and they all
went out into the orchard. Dick was resigned, Elaine pleasantly excited,
Dorothy eager and aflame with triumphant pride, Harlan self-conscious,
and, in a way, ashamed.

As he read, however, he forgot everything else. The mere sound of the
words came with caressing music to his ears. At times his voice wavered
and his hands trembled, but he kept on, until it grew so dark that he
could no longer see.

They went into the house silently, and Dick touched a match to the fire
already laid in the fireplace, while Dorothy lighted the candles and the
reading lamp. The afterglow faded and the moon rose, yet still they rode
with Elaine and her company, through mountain passes and over blossoming
fields, past many dangers and strange happenings, and ever away from the
Castle of Content.

Harlan's deep, vibrant voice, now stern, now tender, gave new meaning to
his work. His secret belief in it gave it a beauty which no one else would
ever see. Dorothy, listening so intently that it was almost pain, never
took her eyes from his face. In that hour, if Harlan could have known it,
her woman's soul was kneeling before his, naked and unasham