o it with a gesture of impatience.

"Katharine, Katharine," he repeated, and seemed to himself to be with
her. He lost his sense of all that surrounded him; all substantial
things--the hour of the day, what we have done and are about to do, the
presence of other people and the support we derive from seeing their
belief in a common reality--all this slipped from him. So he might have
felt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue had
hung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one
woman. The chirp of a robin on the bough above his head awakened him,
and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in
which he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and
Mary, stripping ivy from the trees. When he came up with her he linked
his arm through hers and said:

"Now, Mary, what's all this about America?"

There was a brotherly kindness in his voice which seemed to her
magnanimous, when she reflected that she had cut short his explanations
and shown little interest in his change of plan. She gave him her
reasons for thinking that she might profit by such a journey, omitting
the one reason which had set all the rest in motion. He listened
attentively, and made no attempt to dissuade her. In truth, he found
himself curiously eager to make certain of her good sense, and accepted
each fresh proof of it with satisfaction, as though it helped him to
make up his mind about something. She forgot the pain he had caused her,
and in place of it she became conscious of a steady tide of well-being
which harmonized very aptly with the tramp of their feet upon the dry
road and the support of his arm. The comfort was the more glowing in
that it seemed to be the reward of her determination to behave to him
simply and without attempting to be other than she was. Instead of
making out an interest in the poets, she avoided them instinctively, and
dwelt rather insistently upon the practical nature of her gifts.

In a practical way she asked for particulars of his cottage, which
hardly existed in his mind, and corrected his vagueness.

"You must see that there's water," she insisted, with an exaggeration
of interest. She avoided asking him what he meant to do in this cottage,
and, at last, when all the practical details had been thrashed out as
much as possible, he rewarded her by a more intimate statement.

"One of the rooms," he said, "must be my study, for, you see, Mary,