eased annoyance as he picked up his hat,
"Aw, quit yer foolin', now, Kid! I got to hustle them trunks." He was
sufficiently refreshed by the attack, however, to sing to himself as he
labored. And when the start was made he insisted that Ewing should
drive. Ben sat in the rear seat. He wanted to look at Ewing's back for
five hours.

The sick woman, in another and easier conveyance, rejoiced that she was
going still farther into the peace of her last refuge. As they left the
brown-floored valley and began to climb the mountain road, she was glad
that the green walls closed in behind them; glad of every difficult
ascent; every stream forded; every confusing turn of the way. She was
hiding herself, cunningly insuring the peace of her last hours.

She was troubled now only by Virginia, who hung upon her with an
agonized solicitude. But she promised herself to wear this down by her
own cheerfulness and expressed certainty. Virginia would see her
peaceful, hopeful, happy; she would become used to the idea of her
wasting; and the actual going out would come gently to her as something
fit and benign. Life so abounding as Virginia's could not long droop
under the shadow of death.

Made at home in the lake cabin, she still felt the world rushing back
from her as had the fields rushed by when she looked from the car
window. And she rested in this. Affairs went on about her, plans were
made, talk of the future or of the day; all went by her unheeded, save
for a blurred and pleasant effect of swiftness. Outwardly she was
serene, languorous, incuriously placid. Inwardly she thrilled with a
luxury of inertness. She had loosed herself in the ebbing tide, and she
folded her hands and smiled from this with the assured indolence of one
who knows that some earned reward will not long be delayed. The
slow-paced even life was a balm to her, the gathering about the table at
mealtimes, the evenings in the studio, when her sister played or talked
with Ewing; when she could lie still on the couch and try to make
herself forgotten, regretting only the short dry cough that racked her
night and morning and brought her to the minds of the others.

She had thought that she could adjust herself, after a little, to the
new look in Ewing's eyes, knowing as she did its secret spring. It was a
look of blind acceptance, of unquestioning adoration--and mingled with
it was a maddening pity. But there flashed from him, too, at times, a
look of purpose and