path crushed between the tall, sun-faded
grasses as I went.

Mr. Longworth laid down his work as I approached. A strange, absurd
shyness possessed me, after the weeks of strengthening friendship and
simple good-fellowship, but I held out the great bunch of daisies
playfully to him, as I seated myself on the pile of rugs. He reached
his hand for them eagerly, and buried his face in their sunny depths.

His eyes shone feverishly with his stress of work, and his thin cheeks
were flushed. "You look tired," I said. "You should not write so long."

Thus far, though we had often jested about it, we had never read each
other portions of our work.

"When I get mine half done," I had said, when he begged me to read him a
chapter.

"When I can manage to make a chapter run smoothly to its end," he had
replied laughing, in turn, but now to-day, urged by some necessity for
an absorbing topic into which I could plunge, losing my restlessness, I
insisted that he should read fragments, at least, to me.

He demurred at first. "I have told you how stupid it sounds, these
disconnected bits, little descriptions, detached conversations.
Sometimes I think I shall never use them after all." He fingered the
pages absently.

"No, read it to me as it is," I begged. "I must hear it. I understand,
of course, how it is written."

And so, yielding to my entreaties, he read, while I leaned back against
the tree trunk, listening at first critically, and interested, perhaps,
because it was his work, then with clasped hands and shortening breath,
leaning forward that I might lose no word. A little squirrel scampered
through the undergrowth back of us, and far in another field I could
hear Mr. Hopper's quavering voice, as he called to the haymakers.
Sometimes a leaf rustled, falling to the ground, but it was very quiet.

At last he laid down the leaves, and fixed his dark eyes eagerly on my
face, as if he would read my thoughts, but my eyes were full of tears,
and they were selfish tears. "My poor book!" I said, with a tender
contempt for it.

"Do you mean--?" he began increduously.

"I mean that this is wonderful, and that I know I shall never write
again," I said. "I do not know how it is, but I can read by the light of
your book that you have genius, and that I am a failure. It is well that
something brought it home to me before I wasted any more time." I meant
to speak bravely, but I knew more than this. I knew that, with all my
air-cast