at one side of the fireplace, peas were
simmering. The table was spread, and there was white bread and jersey
butter and raspberries. Adam, with Lassie's puppies crawling over him,
sat in the doorway, and watched Robin put the finishing touches to
their Sunday dinner.

His apparel was somewhat picturesque, and he had a brown and
thoroughly healthy look. Robin was dressed in a costume of blue
denims. The skirt was rather short, and the waist was a blouse,
finished at the throat with a broad collar that turned away from a
neck still white in spite of much sunlight. Their months of roughing
it had not harmed them, and only the intense sadness in Adam's eyes,
the pathetic droop of Robin's mouth, when they thought themselves
unobserved, told a story different from that of pastoral content.

Their meal was unusually silent. Sometimes they fell into long lapses
of silence; there was so much not to say. In all the weeks of the past
they had worked, almost feverishly, allowing as little time as
possible for thought, and never speaking of what was oftenest in their
minds. Much of the time Adam seemed to be in a dream, only half
realizing the flight of time, that made hope more and more hopeless.
Robin said nothing. One would not seek to console the sky with phrases
if all the stars were wiped out. She half reproached herself at times
for the peace, the something akin to happiness, that had crept into
her life. She had long before grown very weary of the world and all it
had to offer.

She was stung at the sight of Adam's quiet face, with the repressed
suffering that had somehow touched it with a beauty it had not
possessed, and she said impetuously, "Let us go out, Adam; let us go
quite away somewhere, and talk. There is so much I want to ask you,
but I have not dared."

He looked up with such a hurt expression that she went on quickly,
"Not that; I mean I couldn't. I have been afraid to put things in
words. They grow so much more real then. But now I am afraid to keep
my thoughts longer."

They went past the wheat and corn fields, through a narrow canon that
led them to a valley they had never seen before. It was very
beautiful, and the play of the sunlight on the high walls of rock, the
murmur of the stream below them, the trembling aspens, the white peaks
in the distance, made a scene worthy their attention, but they were
blind to it.

They sat down on a broad stone seat; presently Adam said, "Now, tell
me; tell me h