ney, Ida!" He took her hand, but received no answering
pressure. "The money,--think of it! We shall be able--" Then catching
sight of an expression on her features that was almost cruel in its
chill absence of sympathy, Silverthorn dropped her hand in a pet, and
walked quickly out of the house back to the mill.

She did not follow him. It was their first misunderstanding.

Silverthorn remained at his desk, went to his own boarding-house for
dinner, and returned to the mill, but always with a sense of unbroken
suffering. What had happened? Why had Ida been so unresponsive? Why
had he felt angry with her? These questions repeated themselves
incessantly, and were lost again in a chaotic humming that seemed to
fill his ears and to shut out the usual sounds of the day, making him
feel as if thrust away into a cell by himself, at the same time that
he was moving about among other people.

Vibbard was to arrive that afternoon. Silverthorn wished he had told
Ida, before leaving her, how soon his friend was coming. As no
particular hour had been named in the letter, he grew intolerably
restless, and finally told Winwood that he was going to the depot, to
wait.

All this time Ida had been nearly as wretched as he; and, unable to
make out why this cloud had come over them just when they ought to
have been happiest, she, too, went out into the air for relief, and
wandered along the hill-side by the river.

It was early summer again. The lilacs were in bloom. All along the
fence in front of Winwood's house were vigorous bushes in full flower.
Ida, as she passed out, broke off a spray and put it in her hair,
wishing that its faint perfume might be a spell to bring Silverthorn
back.

On the edge of the wood where she had been idly pacing for a few
minutes, all at once she heard a crackling of twigs and dry leaves
under somebody's active tread, just behind her. It did not sound like
her lover's step. She looked around. The man, a stranger with strong
features and thick beard, halted at once and looked at her--silently,
as if he had forgotten to speak, but with a degree of homage that
dispelled everything like alarm.

She stood still, looking at him as earnestly as he at her. Then, she
hardly knew how, a conviction came to her.

"Mr. Vibbard?" she said, in a low inquiring tone. To herself she
whispered, "Six years!"

Somehow, although she expected it, there was something terrible in
having this silent, strange man respond: