nt of drawing-rooms; she
was the woman who strode like a goddess and for whom timidities had no
existence. She was not then, after all, I exultantly reflected, the
hot-house orchid; a mere whisper and fragrance on waxy petals. She was
the splendid flower I had conceived, fit for God's good open skies. And
that thought sent a rich bugle note of triumph ringing through the chaos
of my misery.

Of a surety it was no place for me. In what was to be said behind that
door I had no part. She had come splendidly, but she had not come to me.
These thoughts raced tumultuously through my mind, and when she reached
the steps of the porch, and the light showed the mud and dust on her
corduroy skirt, and caught the gold of her hair under an upturned hat
brim, I bit savagely at my lips and turned away.

I sat for an hour or more in the shadow of a fence line, with the night
mists rising and congealing under the pale moonlight like the tracery of
frost on a julep mug. I had left my coat inside and at last I was
conscious of being deeply chilled. As often as I turned my eyes out upon
the mountain and forest they came back to dwell on the rough log wall
that separated her from me. I felt the drawing of the magnet. Inside at
least I could look at her, devour her with my eyes though I might not
open my arms to her or even my lips except to utter commonplaces. But
then the thought would come of the tenderness of the reunion which was
perhaps at that moment being enacted so near me, yet so far from me, and
at the picture I ground my teeth. Why had I at last discovered her to be
the sum of all my dreams, and more, only to sit outside a wall of logs
and know that inside she was pouring out on another man the miracle of
her tenderness?

To-morrow I would deliver her husband over to her and go back. Finally,
however, I realized that for to-night the Marcus house was my only
available abode, and that by this time the first affections of greeting
would be over. I could safely return.

Decency and civility demanded that I shake her hand and give an account
of my rough nursing. The cabin was already crowded. What shifting and
rearranging her arrival might necessitate was a thing to which I should
accommodate myself before the household settled down to sleep. Already I
might have caused inconvenience by my disappearance.

As I drew near the house, the cracks of the shutters still held threads
of light. At the threshold of the room where I had le