e to town, leaving Dic and Rita to themselves,
much to the girl's alarm, though she and Dic had been alone together
many times before. Thus Dic had further opportunity to make a mistake;
but he did not mention the letter, and the girl's confidence came slowly
back to her.

The evening was balmy, and after a time Dic and Rita walked to the crest
of the little slope that fell gently ten or fifteen feet to the water's
edge. A sycamore log answered the purpose of a divan, and a great
drooping elm furnished a royal canopy. A half-moon hung in the sky,
whitening a few small clouds that seemed to be painted on the blue-black
dome. The air, though not oppressive, was warm enough to make all
nature languorous, and the soft breath of the south wind was almost
narcotic in its power to soothe. A great forest is never still; even its
silence has a note of its own. The trees seem to whisper to each other
in the rustling of their leaves. The birds, awakened by the wind or by
the breaking of a twig, speak to their neighbors. The peevish catbird
and the blue jay grumble, while the thrush, the dove, and the redbird
peep caressingly to their mates, and again fall asleep with gurgles of
contentment in their throats.

Rita and Dic sat by the river's edge for many minutes in silence. The
ever wakeful whippoorwill piped his doleful cry from a tree across the
water, an owl hooted from the blackness of the forest beyond the house,
and the turtle-doves cooed plaintively to each other in their
far-reaching, mournful tones, giving a minor note to the nocturnal
concert. Now and then a fish sprang from the water and fell back with a
splash, and the water itself kept up a soft babble like the notes of a
living flute.

Certainly the time was ripe for a mistake, but Dic did not make one. A
woman's favor comes in waves like the flowing of the sea; and a wise
man, if he fails to catch one flood, will wait for another. Dic was
unconsciously wise, for Rita's favor was at its ebb when she walked down
to the river bank. Ebb tide was indicated by the fact that she sat as
far as possible from him on the log. The first evidence of a returning
flood-tide would be an unconscious movement on her part toward him.
Should the movement come from him there might be no flood-tide.

During the first half-hour Dic did most of the talking, but he spoke
only of a book he had borrowed from Billy Little. With man's usual
tendency to talk a subject threadbare, he clung to