o an enclosure--the walls of a room--the
walled-in streets of New York.... It's like suddenly stepping out of a
cellar to the edge of eternal space, and looking down into nothing."

"Is that the way these rolling hillocks of Delaware County impress you?"
he asked, laughing.

"Yes, Kelly. If I ever found myself in the Alps I believe the happiness
would so utterly over-awe me that I'd remain in my hotel under the bed.
What are you laughing at? _Voluptates commendat rarior usus_."

"_Sit tua cura sequi, me duce tutus eris_!" he laughed, mischievously
testing her limit of Latin.

"_Plus e medico quam e morbo periculi!_" she answered, saucily.

"You cunning little thing!" he exclaimed: "_vix a te videor posse tenere
manus!_"

"_Di melius, quam nos moneamus talia quenquam!_" she said, demurely;
"Louis, we are becoming silly! Besides, I probably know more Latin than
you do--as it was my mother's favourite relaxation to teach me to speak
it. And I imagine that your limit was your last year at Harvard."

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in
all my life!"

"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "_noli
me tangere!_" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light,
friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep
contentment:

"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray
void without the gods."

And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the
height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest
stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard
wood--worthlessly young as yet but beautiful.

From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers--they of the solid
crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted
cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds
the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of
breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young
woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks,
pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris
and pink azalea.

"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance.

"It's stopped."

"_A cause de_--?"

"_Je n'en sais rien, Valerie_."

She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back,
thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance.

"Has not your d