acquainted in a day."

The first long hill was surmounted and away they bowled again, past
cottage and farmhouse, through strips of woodland and between fields
from which came the fragrance of the springing grass and the peepings
of the hylas. The moon soon rose, full-orbed, above the higher eastern
hills, and the mild April evening became luminous and full of beauty.

A healing sense of quiet and security already began to steal into
Alida's bruised heart. In turning her back upon the town in which she
had suffered so greatly, she felt like one escaping from prison and
torture. An increasing assurance of safety came with every mile; the
cool, still radiance of the night appeared typical of her new and most
unexpected experience. Light had risen on her shadowed path, but it
was not warm, vivifying sunlight, which stimulates and develops. A few
hours before she was in darkness which might be felt--yet it was a
gloom shot through and through with lurid threatening gleams. It had
seemed to her that she had fallen from home, happiness, and honor to
unfathomed depths, and yet there had appeared to be deeper and darker
abysses on every side. She had shuddered at the thought of going out
into the world, feeling that her misfortune would awaken suspicion
rather than sympathy, scorn instead of kindness; that she must toil on
until death, to sustain a life to which death would come as God's
welcome messenger. Then had come this man at her side, with his
comparatively trivial troubles and perplexities, and he had asked her
help--she who was so helpless. He had banished despair from her
earthly future, he had lifted her up and was bearing her away from all
which she had so dreaded; nothing had been asked which her crushed
spirit was unable to bestow; she was simply expected to aid him in his
natural wish to keep his home and to live where he had always dwelt.
His very inability to understand her, to see her broken, trampled life
and immeasurable need as she saw it, brought quietness of mind. The
concentration of his thoughts on a few homely and simple hopes gave her
immunity. With quick intuition, she divined that she had not a
whimsical, jealous, exacting nature to deal with. He was the plain,
matter-of-fact man he seemed; so literal and absolutely truthful that
he would appear odd to most people. To her mind, his were the traits
which she could now most welcome and value. He knew all about her, she
had merely to be