blood to be part of it."

It was like pleading with the stern expression on Martin's face.

He was not apparently listening, and when he spoke he carried on his own
thought:

"Queer how things dovetail. We drop a stitch and then go back and pick
it up--now there is that place of yours, down South, Ridge House!"

Doris's face twitched and then, because she was in that state closely
bordering upon the unknown, that state open to impressions and
suggestions from sources outside the explainable, Silver Gap seemed to
open alluringly to her imagination. It _was_ like a dropped stitch to be
taken up and woven into the pattern!

She suddenly felt that she had always known she must go back. It was
like the heart trouble--a thing on her road! Doris smiled and David
patted her hands.

"That's the way it strikes me," he said, quite as if he were gaining
his inspiration whence hers came. "After you told me about the--the
children, you know, Doris, years ago, I went down there and gave the
place a look-over. The South always affects me like a--well, a lotus
flower--sleeping but filled with wonderful dreams. It gets me! Why,
after seeing Ridge House I even went so far as to buy a piece of land
known as Blowing Rock Clearing. I've planned, if that scamp of a nephew
of mine ever develops into a sawbones, to leave him in charge here and
go down South myself and put up a shack on my clearing." Martin was
watching Doris now from under his brows; he was talking against the
silence that might engulf her again; seeking to hold her to a future
that he had been vaguely considering in the past. He thankfully saw her
interest growing.

"You did that, David--how like you!"

The tears still came easily to Doris's eyes.

"Oh, well, I have a thrifty streak, and I hated to see a property like
Ridge House lie fallow. It's great. The buying of Blowing Rock was pure
Yankee sense of a bargain. But you see how it all works out. You'll have
the time of your life developing your holdings and, at odd moments, I
can start my shack. Look upon the change as an adventure--nothing
permanent. In a year or so you may be able to spend most of the time on
pavements--though why in God's name you want to is hard to imagine."

Doris was smiling.

"But the girls!" she faltered.

"Forget them. Give them a chance to think of you. Take them abroad--that
will be good for you all, but in the autumn, Doris, go South! You must
escape next winter."

CHAPTE