so much happiness they
could afford to be careless about it as other married folk were
careless. There might not be daily banquets of delight, but cool fruits,
the morning and the evening, the still course of being that seemed to
him now, after his seething first youth, the actual paradise. But Lydia
was going on, an erect slim figure in her enfolding scarf.

"And you mustn't be sorry I stole the necklace--except for Anne and
Farvie, if she does anything to me." "She" was always Esther, he had
learned. "I'm glad, because it makes us both alike."

"You and me?"

"Yes. You took something that makes you call yourself a thief. Now I'm a
thief. We're just alike. You said, when you first came home, doing a
thing like that, breaking law, makes you feel outside."

"It isn't only feeling outside," he made haste to tell her. "You are
outside. You're outside the social covenant men have made. It's a good
righteous covenant, Lydia. It was come to through blood and misery. It's
pretty bad to be outside."

"Well," said Lydia, "I'm outside anyway. With you. And I'm glad of it.
You won't feel so lonesome now."

Jeff's eyes began to brim.

"You little hateful thing," he said. "You've made me cry."

"Got a hanky?" Lydia inquired solicitously.

"Yes. Besides, it isn't a hanky cry, unless you make it worse. Lydia, I
wish you and Anne would go away and let father and me muddle along
alone."

"Do you," said Lydia joyously. "Then you do like me. You like me
awfully. You think you'll tell me so if I stay round."

"Do I, you little prying thing?" He thought he could establish some
ground of understanding between them if he abused her. "You're a good
little sister, Lydia, but you're a terrifying one."

"No," said Lydia. "I'm not a sister." She let the enfolding scarf go and
the breeze took its ends and made them ripple. "Anne's a sister. She
likes you almost as well as she does Farvie. But she does like Farvie
best. I don't like Farvie best. I like you best of all the world. And I
love to. I'm determined to. You ought to be liked over and over, because
you've had so much taken away from you. Why, that's what I'm for, Jeff.
That's what I was born for. Just to like you."

He took a step toward her, and the rippling scarf seemed to beckon him
on. Lydia stepped back. "But if you touched me, Jeff," she said, "if you
kissed me, I'd kill you. I'm glad you did it once when you didn't think.
But if we did it once more----"

She stopped