She had not moved. She was as still as the dead oak that towered above
them. The sunset struck upon her bowed head and upon the quiet bosom,
where her hands were clasped.

"I will wait," she answered.

He came nearer and kissed the hands upon her breast. His face was
flushed and his lips were hot.

"Thank you," he said simply as he drew back.

In a moment he stooped to pick up the scattered goldenrod, heaping it
into her arms. "This is enough to fill the house," he protested. "You
can't want so much."

He had regained his rational tone, and she responded to it with a smile.

"I never know when I'm satisfied," she said. "It is my weakness. As a
child I always ate candy until it made me ill."

They crossed the field, the long plumes brushing against them and
powdering them with a feathery gold dust. At the fence she gave him the
bunch and lightly swung herself over the sunken rails. It did not occur
to him to assist her; she had always been as good as he at vaulting
bars. Now her long skirts retarded her, and she laughed as she came
quickly to the ground on the opposite side.

"One of the many disadvantages of my sex," she said. "The best prisons
men ever invented are women's skirts. Our wings are clipped while we
wear them."

"It is hard," he returned as he recalled her school-girl feats. "You
were such a mighty jumper."

"Those halcyon days are done," she sighed. "I can never stray beyond my
'sphere' again."

They had reached the end of the avenue, so he left her and went homeward
along the road. The sun had gone slowly down and the western horizon was
ripped open in a deep red track. The charred skeleton of the oak loomed
black and sinister against the afterglow, and at its feet the glory went
out of the autumn field. Straight ahead the sound of shots rang out
where a flock of bats circled above the road. On the darkening landscape
the lights began to glimmer in farmhouses far apart, and to Nicholas
they seemed watchful, friendly eyes that looked upon him. All Nature was
watchful--all the universe friendly. The glow which irradiated his
outlook with an abrupt transfiguration was to him the glow of universal
joy, though he knew it to be but the vanishing beam of youth and the end
thereof age.

It seemed to him that he was singled out--securely set apart by some
beneficent hand for some supreme good which, in his limited
observation, he had never seen put forth in the lots of others. His own
life lay