rove to find his way back into their lost dream and take her with
him; but there was no visible path. Rose spared him questions. She
stayed gratefully on, and grannie was delighted with her. Rose had such
a way of fitting into circumstance that it seemed an entirely natural
thing to have her there, and Peter forgot to wonder even at the pleasure
of it. Twice she came in from a walk pale and inexplicably excited, and
he knew she had been besieging the scornful lady in the other house. But
she kept her counsel. She had never seen Osmond since her coming, though
she knew he and Peter had long talks together at the plantation.

One night, a cold, unseasonable one, Osmond was alone in the shack, his
room unlighted save by the flaring wood. The cabin had a couch, two
chairs, and a big table, this covered with books. There were books on
the wall, and the loft above, where he slept when he was not in his
neighboring tent, made a balcony, taking half the room. He was in his
long chair stretched among the shadows, his face lighted intermittently
from the fire. He was thinking deeply, his black brows drawn together,
his nervous hands gripped on the elbows of the chair. There was a slight
tap at the door. He did not heed it, being used to mice among the logs
and birds twittering overhead. Then the door opened, and a lady came in.
Osmond half rose from his chair, and leaning forward, looked at her. He
knew her, and yet strangely he had no belief that she was real. It was
Rose, a long cloak about her, the hood slipped back from her rich hair.
Her face was flushed by the buffeting of the wind, and its moist
sweetness tingled with health. It was apparent to him at once that, as
he was looking at her in the firelight, she also had fixed his face in
the gloom. She was smiling at him, and her eyes were kind. Then she
spoke.

"I came to see you, Mr. Osmond Grant."

Osmond was now upon his feet. He drew a chair into the circle of light.

"Let me take your cloak," he said. It seemed to him that no such
exciting thing had ever happened.

"No, no. It isn't wet." She tossed it on the bench by the door, and
having put both hands to her hair with the reassuring touch that is
pretty in women, she turned to him, a radiant creature smiling out of
her black drapery. "But I'll sit down," she said.

The next moment, he hardly knew how it was, they were there by the fire,
and he had accepted her. She was beautiful and wonderful, a thing to be
wors