ssed on,
calling back: "I'll see you again before dinner, very likely."

Eugene sighed.

She came down after an hour, dressed in a flowered organdie, a black
silk band about her throat, a low collar showing her pretty neck. She
picked up a magazine, passing a wicker table, and came down the veranda
where Eugene was sitting alone. Her easy manner interested him, and her
friendliness. She liked him well enough to be perfectly natural with him
and to seek him out where he was sitting once she saw he was there.

"Oh, here you are!" she said, and sat down, taking a chair which was
near him.

"Yes, here I am," he said, and began teasing her as usual, for it was
the only way in which he knew how to approach her. Suzanne responded
vivaciously, for Eugene's teasing delighted her. It was the one kind of
humor she really enjoyed.

"You know, Mr. Witla," she said to him once, "I'm not going to laugh at
any of your jokes any more. They're all at my expense."

"That makes it all the nicer," he said. "You wouldn't want me to make
jokes at my expense, would you? That would be a terrible joke."

She laughed and he smiled. They looked at a golden sunset filtering
through a grove of tender maples. The spring was young and the leaves
just budding.

"Isn't it lovely tonight?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, in a mellow, meditative voice, the first ring
of deep sincerity in it that he ever noticed there.

"Do you like nature?" he asked.

"Do I?" she returned. "I can't get enough of the woods these days. I
feel so queer sometimes, Mr. Witla. As though I were not really alive at
all, you know. Just a sound, or a color in the woods."

He stopped and looked at her. The simile caught him quite as any notable
characteristic in anyone would have caught him. What was the color and
complexity of this girl's mind? Was she so wise, so artistic and so
emotional that nature appealed to her in a deep way? Was this wonderful
charm that he felt the shadow or radiance of something finer still?

"So that's the way it is, is it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said quietly.

He sat and looked at her, and she eyed him as solemnly.

"Why do you look at me so?" she asked.

"Why do you say such curious things?" he answered.

"What did I say?"

"I don't believe you really know. Well, never mind. Let us walk, will
you? Do you mind? It's still an hour to dinner. I'd like to go over and
see what's beyond those trees."

They went down a little pat