s too much glare," said he.

"You are surely hard to please."

"What I call fine weather is something a man has something in common
with. If one were a little chap again, just leaving school for a
holiday, this would be a glorious day, but--what _man_ has spirits equal
to" (he looked above) "this sort of thing."

His words came home to Sophia with overwhelming force, for, as they went
on, touching many subjects one after another, she knew with absolute
certainty that her companion had not the slightest intention of being
her suitor. If the sunny land through which she was walking had been a
waste place, in which storm winds sighed, over which storm clouds
muttered, it would have been a fitter home for her heart just then. She
saw that she was to be called to no sacrifice, but she experienced no
buoyant relief. He was going away; and she was to be left. She had not
known herself when she thought she wanted him to go--she was miserable.
Well, she deserved her misery, for would she not be more miserable if
she married him? Had she not cried and complained? And now the door of
this renunciation was not opened to her--he was going away, and she was
to be left.

Very dull and prosaic was the talk of these two as they walked up the
road to that pine grove where the river curved in, and they turned back
through that strip of wilderness between road and river where it was
easy to be seen that the brightest leaf posies were to be had.

Nearest the pines was a group of young, stalwart maple trees, each of a
different dye--gold, bronze, or red. It was here that they lingered, and
Alec gathered boughs for the children till their hands were full. The
noise of the golden-winged woodpecker was in the air, and the call of
the indigo bird.

Sophia wandered under the branches; her mind was moving always. She was
unhappy. Yes, she deserved that; but he--he was unhappy too; did he
deserve it? Then she asked herself suddenly if she had no further duty
toward him than to come or go at his call. Did she dare, by all that
was true, to wreck his life and her own because she would not stoop to
compel the call that she had feared?

Humility does not demand that we should think ill of ourselves, but that
we should not think of ourselves at all. When Sophia lost sight of
herself she saw the gate of Paradise. After that she was at one again
with the sunshine and the breeze and the birds, with the rapture of the
day and the land, and she cease