ight flooding the lawn touched Jerry's golden hair, and the
bloom of love and youth beautified her cheeks, as she walked away beside
the handsome young artist into the beauty of the June night.

"Come on, Cornelius." Mrs. Darby's voice put the one harsh note into the
harmony of the moment.

"As soon as I put away my discus. That last throw was an awkward one,
and a lot out of line for me," he answered, in his dry, flat voice,
stooping to pick up the implement of his daily pastime.

Up in the big parlor, Eugene and Jerry played the old duets they had
learned together in their childhood, and sang the old songs that Jerusha
Darby had heard when she was a girl, before the lust for wealth had
hardened her arteries and dimmed her eyes to visions that come only to
bless. But the two young people forgot her presence and seemed to live
the hours of the beautiful June night only for each other.

It was nearly midnight when a peal of thunder boomed up the Winnowoc
Valley and the end of a perfect day was brilliant in the grandeur of a
June shower, with skies of midnight blackness cloven through with long
shafts of lightning or swept across by billows of flame, while the storm
wind's strong arms beat the earth with flails of crystal rain.

"Where is Uncle Cornie? I hadn't missed him before," Jerry asked as the
three in the parlor watched the storm pouring out all its wrath upon the
Winnowoc Valley.

"Oh, he went to put up his old discus, and then he went off to bed I
suppose," Aunt Jerry replied, indifferently.

Nothing was ever farther from his wife's thought than the presence of
Cornelius Darby. The two had never lived for each other; they had lived
for the accumulation of property that together they might gather in.

It was long after midnight before the family retired. The moon came out
of hiding as the storm-cloud swept eastward. The night breezes were cool
and sweet, scattering the flower petals, that the shower had beaten off,
in little perfumy cloudlets about the rose-arbor and upon its stone
door-step.

It was long after Jerry Swaim had gone to her room before she slept.
Over and over the events of the day passed in review before her mind:
the city shopping; the dainty lunch in the Delft room at _La Senorita_;
the art exhibit and that one level gray landscape with the flaming,
gorgeous sunset so unlike the green-and-gold sunset landscape of "Eden";
the homeward ride with all its dangerous thrills; the talk with Aun