into her face, so hot
that, on the way to the door, she involuntarily put her hand to her
cheek and held it there. The door came open grumblingly. It sagged upon
the hinges, but, well-used to its vagaries, she overcame it with a
regardless haste.

"Come in," she said, at once, to the man on the step. "It's cold. Oh,
come in!"

He stepped inside the entry, removing his fur cap, and disclosing a
youthful face charged with that radiance which made him, at thirty-five,
almost the counterpart of his former self. It may have come only from
the combination of curly brown hair, blue eyes, and an aspiring lift of
the chin, but it always seemed to mean a great deal more. In the
kitchen, he threw off his heavy coat, while Amelia, bright-eyed and
breathing quickly, stood by, quite silent. Then he looked at her.

"You expected me, didn't you?" he asked.

A warmer color surged into her cheeks. "I didn't know," she said
perversely.

"I guess you did. It's one day over a year. You knew I'd wait a year."

"It ain't a year over the services," said Amelia, trying to keep the
note of vital expectancy out of her voice. "It won't be that till
Friday."

"Well, Saturday I'll come again." He went over to the fire and stretched
out his hands to the blaze. "Come here," he said imperatively, "while I
talk to you."

Amelia stepped forward obediently, like a good little child. The old
fascination was still as dominant as at its birth, sixteen years ago.
She realized, with a strong, splendid sense of the eternity of things,
that always, even while it would have been treason to recognize it, she
had known how ready it was to rise and live again. All through her
married years, she had sternly drugged it and kept it sleeping. Now it
had a right to breathe, and she gloried in it.

"I said to myself I wouldn't come to-day," went on Laurie, without
looking at her. A new and excited note had come into his voice,
responsive to her own. He gazed down at the fire, musing the while he
spoke. "Then I found I couldn't help it. That's why I'm so late. I
stayed in the shop till seven, and some fellows come in and wanted me to
play. I took up the fiddle, and begun. But I hadn't more'n drew a note
before I laid it down and put for the door. 'Dick, you keep shop,' says
I. And I harnessed up, and drove like the devil."

Amelia felt warm with life and hope; she was taking up her youth just
where the story ended.

"You ain't stopped swearin' yet!" she rem