dly across the turf.

"Yes, I am here," she cried. "Do you want me?"

"Do I want you?" he answered curtly. "Don't I always want you?"

A little sob rose in her throat--she knew not why--for, hearing the
tone of his voice, her sadness was strangely assuaged.

"I could not find you," he went on. "And I got into an absurd state of
panic--sent Roger in one direction, and Julius in another, to look for
you."

"Whereupon Roger, probably, posted down to the stables, and Julius up
to the chapel to search. Where the heart dwells there the feet follow.
Meanwhile, you came straight here and found me yourself."

"I might have known I should do that."

The importunate thought returned upon Katherine and with it a touch of
her late melancholy.

"Ah! one knows nothing for certain when one is frightened," she said.
She moved closer to him, holding out her hand. "Here," she continued,
"you are a little too shadowy, too unsubstantial, in this light, Dick.
I would rather make more sure of your presence."

Richard Calmady laughed very gently. Then the two stood silent, looking
out over the dim valley, hand in hand. The scent of the gardens was
about them. Moving lights showed through the many windows of the great
house. The waterfowl called sleepily. The churring of the night-hawks
was continuous, soothing as the hum of a spinning-wheel. Somewhere,
away in the Warren, a fox barked. In the eastern sky, the young moon
began to climb above the ragged edge of the firs. When they spoke again
it was very simply, in broken sentences, as children speak. The poetry
of their relation to one another and the scene about them were too full
of meaning, too lovely, to call for polish of rhetoric, or pointing by
epigram.

"Tell me," Katherine said, "were you satisfied? Did I entertain your
people prettily?"

"Prettily? You entertained them as they had never been entertained
before--like a queen--and they knew it. But why did you stay out here
alone?"

"To think--and to look at Brockhurst."

"Yes, it's worth looking at now," he said. "It was like a body wanting
a soul till you came."

"But you loved it?" Katherine reasoned.

"Oh yes! because I believed the soul would come some day. Brockhurst,
and the horses, and the books, all helped to make the time pass while I
was waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"Why for you, of course, you dear, silly sweet. Haven't I always been
waiting for you--just precisely and wholly you, nothing more or
l