ved on the bushes of those
far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was
like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern
and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the
roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here,
of absorbing all the life of the scene.

Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl alone, for the
first time, with the man who loves her and whom she loves. At that
moment she loved him so much that she would have fled anywhere in the
world from him.

The next moment he said in a matter-of-fact tone:

"Sit down on that stone, and let me shake out your shoes before we go
on; they're full of sand."

She obeyed with an open-eyed gaze that dwelt on him, while he knelt
down and loosened the bows, and took off the little clumpy low shoes,
shaking them out carefully, and then put them on once more, retying the
bows neatly with long, slowly accomplishing fingers.

"They'll get full of earth again," she protested, her voice half lost in
the silence.

"Then I'll take them off and shake them out over again."

He stood up, brushing the earth from his palms, smiling down at her as
she stood up also. "I've always dreamed of doing that," he said simply.
"I've dreamed of taking you in my arms and carrying you off through the
night--as I couldn't that first time! I've longed so to do it, there
have been times when I couldn't _stand_ it to see you, because you
weren't mine." Then--her hands were in his, his dear, protecting hands,
the hands she loved, with their thrilling, long-familiar touch, claiming
as well as giving.

"Oh--_Dosia_!" he said below his breath.

As their eyes dwelt on each other in that long look, all that had hurt
love rose up between them, and passed away, forgiven. She previsioned a
time when all her life before he came into it would have dropped out of
remembrance as a tale that is told. And now----

It seemed that he was going to be a very splendid lover!

XXVIII

The summer was nearly at an end--a summer that had brought
rehabilitation to the Typometer Company, yet rehabilitation under strict
rule, strict economy, endless work. Nominally the same thing, the
typometer was now but one factor of trade among a dozen other patented
inventions under the control of Rondell Brothers.

If there was not quite the same personal flavor as yet in Justin's
relation to the business which had see