t
hurry." He smiled as he spoke. "It will do you good to leave O'mie out
of mind for a little while."

Then he hurried off to the sick room, leaving us together. It seemed
years since that quiet April sunset when we gathered the pink flowers
out in the draw, and I crowned Marjie my queen. It was now late June,
and the first little yellow leaves were on the cottonwoods, telling that
midsummer was near.

"Marjie," I said, putting the hand she had withdrawn through my arm
again, "the moon is just coming up. Let's go out on the prairie a little
while. Those black shadows down there distress me. I must have some rest
from darkness."

We walked slowly out on Cliff Street and into the open prairie, which
the great summer moon was flooding with its soft radiance. No other
light is ever so regal as the full moon above the prairie, where no
black shadows can checker and blot out and hem in its limitless glory.
Marjie and I were young and full of vigor, but the steady drain on mind
and heart, and the days and nights of broken rest, were not without
effect. And yet to-night, with hope once more for O'mie's life, with a
sense of lifted care, and with the high tide of the year pouring out its
riches round about us, the peace of the prairies fell like a benediction
on us, as we loitered about the grassy spaces, quiet and very happy.

Then the care for others turned our feet homeward. I must relieve Aunt
Candace to-night by O'mie's side, and Marjie must be with her mother.
The moonlight tempted us to linger a little longer as we passed by
"Rockport," and we parted the bushes and stood on our old playground
rock.

"Marjie, the moonlight makes a picture of you always," I said gently.

She did not answer, but gazed out across the valley, above whose dark
greenery the silvery mists lay fold on fold. When she turned her face to
mine, something in her eyes called up in me that inspiration that had
come to be a part of my thought of her, that sense of a woman's worth
and of her right to tenderest guardianship.

"Marjie"--I put both arms around her and drew her to me--"the best thing
in the world is a good girl, and you are the best girl in the world." I
held her close. It was no longer a boy's admiration, but a man's love
that filled my soul that night. Marjie drew gently away.

"We must go now, Phil, indeed we must. Mother needs me."

Oh, I could wait her time. I took her arm and led her out to the street.
The bushes closed behind