pon his burning face, she was on the veranda with grannie, a little
pale still, but sweet and responsive in the quiet ways she had for every
day. Peter, looking at her, felt the sun go out of his blood, and the
mad worship of that hour in the orchard seemed like a past bacchanal
rout and triumph when the worshipers go home to feed the flocks. His
will, recalled, took him by swift revulsion to Electra, but it could not
make the journey welcome. She seemed to be far away on some barren plain
at the top of climbing. Rose, too, was far away, but the mountain where
she lived was full of springs and blossomy slopes, and at the top the
muses and the graces danced and laughed. There were flying feet always,
the gleam of draperies, the fall of melody,--always pleasures and the
hint of pleasures higher still,--and echoes from old joys tasted by gods
and nymphs in the childhood of the world. The way there, too, was hard,
but what would the path matter to such blisses of the mind and soul? In
his daze he became aware that grannie was looking at him kindly.

"I guess you've been asleep," said she.

"He's been dreaming, too," said Rose, in her intimate kindliness, always
the same to him as if he were a boy with whom she had a tender and
confident relation.

Peter rubbed his eyes.

"I got lost," he said ruefully. "I went up on the mountain and got
lost."

"I guess you dreamed it," said grannie. "Come, let's have our dinner;"
and they went in together, both the young things helping her.

Peter reflected that Rose had not even heard what he said. She did not
care what the mountain was, or whether he was lost. But at the table,
while grannie talked about gardening and the things Osmond meant to do
another year, and Rose glanced up with involuntary question in her eyes
whenever Osmond's name was mentioned, he seemed to have the vision of
the mountain again before him and to hear the laughter and the sound of
dancing feet. The picture, little by little, faded and would not be
recalled, and by afternoon it had quite gone. Sobered, his feet on the
earth again, he went away in the early evening, to see Electra.

Rose waited until the dark had really fallen and evening sounds had
begun. Then she stole out of the house and, a black cloak about her,
this time, went across the fields to the oak tree. At a little distance
from it she paused, her heart too imperious to let her speak and find
out whether he was there. But when she was about t