ere
growing warm--they sat silent on an upper balcony, or talked about the
stars, each knew that the inner tension would never be relaxed till it
was broken.

If there was any doubt of that it was on Thor's side. Because she said
nothing, there were minutes when he hoped she had nothing to say.
Unaware of a woman's capacity for keeping the surface unruffled while
storm may be raging beneath, he beguiled himself at times into thinking
that his fears of her acuteness had been false alarms. If so, he could
only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up
on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget.
So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on
her part from comment that could give him pain, he began to indulge the
hope--a hope which he knew in his heart to be baseless--that she had
nothing to remember.

When he was called on at last to face the realities of the case the
moment was as unexpected to him as it was to her. She had not meant to
bring the subject up on that particular evening. She had made no
program--not because she was uncertain as to what she ought to say, but
because the impulse to say it lagged. In the end it came to her without
warning, surprising herself no less than him.

"Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie Fay?"

The croaking of frogs seemed part of the silence in which she waited for
his answer. The warm air was heavy with the scents of lilac,
honeysuckle, and syringa. As they stood by the railing of the balcony
that connected the exterior of their two rooms, she erect, he leaning
outward with an arm stretched toward the sky, a great white lilac, whose
roots were in the early days of the Willoughby farm, threw up its
tribute of blossom almost to their feet. The lights of the village being
banked under verdure, the eye sought the stars.

Thor loved the stars. On moonless nights he spent hours in contemplation
of their beckoning mystery. From Auriga and Taurus in January, he
followed them round to Aries and Perseus in December, getting a beam on
his inward way. Just now, with the aid of a pencil, he was tracing for
his wife's benefit the lines of the rising Virgin. Lois could almost
discern the graceful, recumbent figure, winged, noble, lying on the
eastern horizon, Spica's sweet, silvery light a-tremble in her hand. She
was actually thinking how white for a star was Spica's radiance, when
the words slipped out: "Thor