tifling heat, amid
the noise of the busy little city, and constantly subjected to
interruptions, his scientific studies and researches lost half their
charm.

And in proportion as they lost their power to interest him the home on
the mountain-side, beyond reach of the city's heat and dust and clamor,
drew him with increasing and irresistible force. Never before had it
seemed to him so attractive, so beautiful, so homelike as now. He did
not stop to ask himself wherein its new charm consisted or to analyze
the sense of relief and gladness with which he turned his face homeward
when the day's work was ended. He only felt vaguely that the silent,
undemonstrative love which the old place had so long held for him had
suddenly found expression. It smiled to him from the flowers nodding
gayly to him as he passed; it echoed in the tinkling music of the
fountains; the murmuring pines whispered it to him as their fragrant
breath fanned his cheek; but more than all he read it in the brown eyes
which grew luminous with welcome at his approach and heard it in the
low, sweet voice whose wonderful modulations were themselves more
eloquent than words. And with this interpretation of the strange, new
joy day by day permeating his whole life, he went his way in deep
content.

And to Kate Underwood this summer seemed the brightest and the fairest
of all the summers of her young life; why, she could not have told,
except that the skies were bluer, the sunlight more golden, and the
birds sang more joyously than ever before.

In a mining town like Ophir there was comparatively little society for
her, so that most of her evenings were spent at home, and she and
Darrell were of necessity thrown much together. Sometimes he joined her
in a game of tennis, a ride or drive or a short mountain ramble;
sometimes he sat on the veranda with the elder couple, listening while
she played and sang; but more often their voices blended, while the
wild, plaintive notes of the violin rose and fell on the evening air
accompanied by the piano or by the guitar or mandolin. Together they
watched the sunsets or walked up and down the mountain terrace in the
moonlight, enjoying to the full the beauty around them, neither as yet
dreaming that,--more than their joy in the bloom and beauty and
fragrance, in the music of the fountains or the murmuring voices of the
pines, in the sunset's glory, or the moonlight's mystical
radiance,--above all, deeper than all, perv