are exactly the beautiful, flushed Dream Girl I have adored
for months, and your dress most becoming. You are a picture to blind the
eyes of a lonely bachelor, Ruth."

"Oh why did you say that?" wailed the Girl. "Now I've got to feel like a
sneak or tell you----and I didn't want you to know."

"Don't you ever tell me or any one else anything you don't want to,"
said the Harvester roundly. "It's nobody's business!"

"But I must! I can't begin with deception. I was fool enough to think
you wouldn't notice. Man, they painted me! I didn't know they were doing
it, but when it all washed off, I looked so ghastly I almost frightened
myself. I hunted through the boxes they put up for you and found some
pink powder----"

"But don't all the daintiest women powder these days, and consider it
indispensable? The clerk said so, and I've noticed it mentioned in the
papers. I bought it for you to use."

"Yes, just powder, but Man, I put on a lot of cold cream first to stick
the powder good and thick. Oh I wish I hadn't!"

"Well since you've told it, is your conscience perfectly at ease? No
you don't! You sit where you are! You are lovely, and if you don't use
enough powder to cover the paleness, until your colour returns, I'll
hold you and put it on. I know you feel better when you appear so that
every one must admire you."

"Yes, but I'm a fraud!"

"You are no such thing!" cried the Harvester hotly. "There hasn't a
woman in ten thousand got any such rope of hair. I have been seeing the
papers on the hair question, too. No one will believe it's real. If they
think your hair is false, when it is natural, they won't be any more
fooled when they think your colour is real, and it isn't. Very soon it
will be and no one need ever know the difference. You go on and fix up
your level best. To see yourself appearing well will make you ambitious
to become so as soon as possible."

"Harvester-man," said the Girl, gazing at him with wet luminous eyes,
"for the sake of other women, I could wish that all men had an oath to
keep, and had been reared in the woods."

"Here is the place we adjourn to the moon," cried the Harvester. "I
don't know of anything that can cure a sudden accession of swell
head like gazing at the heavens. One finds his place among the atoms
naturally and instantaneously with the eyes on the night sky. Should
you have a wrap? You should! The mists from the lake are cool. I don't
believe there is one among my orders.