lking
with you has brought those days very near to me. When I have thought
of your father and mother it was as though they lived in another world,
as though, if I would, I could never see them, they were so far away."
She leaned back in her chair and broke into a little laugh. "How
foolish of me! Why, David, we shall go to see them--you and I and
Uncle Rufus. We shall go very soon, David." Her slender figure was
clear-cut in the firelight and a hand was held out to me in invitation.

Had the world been mine to give, how gladly would I have lost it for
the right to answer her as she asked; to go with her and to walk by the
creek to that deep sea of our childhood where she had caught the
turtle; to ride with her again over the mountain road where we had
careered so madly on the white mule; to sit with her on the humble back
steps and watch the sun sink into the mountains, and listen to the
sheep in the meadow, the night-hawk in the sky, the rustle of the wind
in the trees--to the valley's lullaby. From this I was held by the
vital fact still unrevealed. I folded my arms and looked at the floor,
to shut from my eyes the idle vision of the days to which Penelope
would lead me, to shut from them Penelope herself sitting very
straight, with head high, so that I had fancied the blue bow tossing
there.

"We'll go in May," she said with a sweep of a small hand, as though our
great adventure were settled. "We will go when the orchards are in
blossom, David. The valley is loveliest then."

To go in May! To go when the hills were clad in the pink and white!
To sit with her on the grassy barn-bridge in the evening as we had sat
in the old days watching the mountains sink into the night, listening
to the last faint echoes of the valley as she turned to restful sleep.
Had the universe been mine to give, I would have bartered it for the
power to answer her as she asked. Such joys as these I dared not even
dream of now, but still I had not the strength to cut myself forever
from the last faint hope of them. I looked up into her face aglow with
prospect of a return to those simple, kindly days; into her eyes,
kindled with that same light that glowed in them in the old time when
she would slip her hands so trustingly in mine as we trudged together
over the fields. I could say nothing.

"Why, David!" she cried, and again a hand was held out to me in appeal.
"Don't you want to go with us?"

I laughed. And what a struggle