good to try. Whatever it was, I wish neither to depreciate it nor to
deny it. It was something that swept me--like the tornado of which one
of your letters speaks--but it passed. It passed, leaving me tired and
older--oh, very much older!--and with an intense desire to creep home.
As a physicist I know nothing of a carnal man and a spiritual man, so
that I cannot enter into your analysis; but I do know that there are
higher and lower promptings in the human heart, and that in my case the
higher turn to you. As compared with you I'm only as the ship compared
to the haven in which it would take refuge. The ship is good for
something, but it needs a port."

Again he decided to leave his appeal suspended here, and on the next
morning began his preparations for gradually turning homeward.

CHAPTER XXX

It was William Sweetapple, the gardener's boy, who informed Lois that
Claude had come back, throwing the information casually over his
shoulder as he watered the lawn.

"Seen Mr. Claude to-day, 'm."

"Oh no, you didn't, Sweetapple," Lois contradicted. "Mr. Claude is in
the West."

"He may be in the West now, 'm, but he wasn't at twenty-five minutes
past two this afternoon."

Sudden fear brought Lois down a step or two of the portico, over the
Corinthian pillars of which roses clambered in early July profusion. In
white, with a broad-brimmed Winterhalter hat from which a floating green
veil hung over her shoulders and down her back, her strong, slim figure
seemed to have gained in fulfilment of herself even in the weeks that
Thor had been away.

"Where did you see him, Sweetapple?--or think you saw him?"

Sweetapple turned the nozzle of the hose so as to develop a crown of
spray with which he bedewed the roses of all colors grouped in a great
central bed. "I didn't think, 'm. It was him."

"Well, where?"

"See him first going into the woods leading up to Duck Rock. That was
when I was on my way to Lawyer Petley's."

"Did you see him twice?"

"See him again as I come back. He was down in the road by that
time--looking up toward old man Fay's--Hadley B. Hobson's place that is
to be. Old man Fay's got to quit. Family moved already. You knew that,
didn't you, 'm?"

It was because Lois was really alarmed by this time that she said, "Oh,
you must have been mistaken, Sweetapple!"

"Just as you say, 'm," Sweetapple agreed; "but I see him; it was him."

She withdrew again, reseating herself in the shade of