u mind my staring at you?" she demanded, innocently. "Isn't
turn-about fair play?"

"But, Miss Filson," he stammered, "I--I thought you lived in town!"

"Then, George didn't tell you that we were to be the closest sort of
neighbors?" The merriment of her laugh was spontaneous. She did not
confide to Saxon just why Steele's silence struck her as highly
humorous. She knew, however, that the place had originally recommended
itself to its purchaser by reason of just that exact circumstance--its
proximity.

The man took a hasty step forward, and spoke with the brusqueness of a
cross-examiner:

"No. Why didn't he tell me? He should have told me! He--" He halted
abruptly, conscious that his manner was one of resentment for being
led, unwarned, into displeasing surroundings, which was not at all
what he meant. Then, as the radiant smile on the girl's face--the
smile such as a very little girl might have worn in the delight of
perpetrating an innocent surprise--suddenly faded into a pained
wonderment, he realized the depth of his crudeness. Of course, she
could not know that he had come there to run away, to seek asylum. She
could not guess, that, in the isolation of such a life as his
uncertainty entailed, associates like herself were the most hazardous;
that, because she seemed to him altogether wonderful, he distrusted
his power to quarantine his heart against her artless magnetism. As he
stood abashed at his own crassness, he wanted to tell her that he
developed these crude strains only when he was thrown into touch with
so fine grained a nature as her own; that it was the very sense of his
own pariah-like circumstance. Then, before she had time to speak, came
a swift artistic leaping at his heart. He should have known that she
would be here! It was her rightful environment! She belonged as
inherently under blossoming dogwood branches as the stars belong
beyond the taint of earth-smoke. She was a dryad, and these were her
woods. After all, how could it matter? He had run away bravely. Now,
she was here also, and the burden of responsibility might rest on the
woodsprites or the gods or his horoscope or wherever it belonged. As
for himself, he would enjoy the present. The future was with destiny.
Of course, friendship is safe so long as love is barred, and of course
it would be only friendship! Does the sun shine anywhere on trellised
vines with a more golden light than where the slopes of Vesuvius bask
just below the smo