s into the clouds and forget the enclosing
wall of buildings and the tumultuous streets. But I was late, and I
had no mind to hurry on such a day. The languor of the spring was in
my veins, and I strolled on, almost unconscious of the life about me.
Ahead, at the crest of Murray Hill, the city seemed to end, and I to
look through a great gate-way into the blue sky, and I fancied myself
standing there in that gate-way, with the valley lying at my feet, my
valley awakened from its winter's sleep, its hill-sides decked with
blossoming orchards, its mountains carpeted with the soft shadows of
the clouds. I saw the ridge, its green slope slashed by the white
winding road which crossed it. That was the same road up which I had
climbed on a May morning long ago, when I hurried to the Professor's
aid, and I followed it now to the clearing; I saw the clearing with the
Professor leaning on his hoe studying a fleck of cloud, and Penelope
watching him silently, fearing to disturb his important meditations.
In these busy years Penelope had been rarely in my thoughts; if at all,
it was as a little girl with a blue ribbon in her hair, the companion
of a few brief weeks of my boyhood. I dared not picture her as growing
up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had
always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I
feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and
wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but
a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood
unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little
sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this
morning, when the far-borne freshness of the woods and fields was in
the air, and I longed to feel the soft earth beneath my feet, to break
from the enclosing walls and to stride over the open fields, I recalled
days like this when the wine of spring was in my veins and I had run
through the meadows in a wasteful riot of energy; and then a particular
day like this when Penelope and I had ridden out of the woods, had come
to the ridge-top and looked over the smiling valley. I seemed to feel
Penelope's arms drawn tightly around me as I pointed across the
friendly land and promised to take care of her. I had had no fear then
that she would ever grow corpulent and florid, and now I found myself
asking if my boyish intuition might not have be