was
a little older, no doubt of that. You cannot hope and yearn and worry
for three years and not show it. And yet she was fine and tender and
sympathetic and emotional. He felt all this. It hurt him a little for
her sake and his too.

"Well, how have you been?" he asked. They were in the confines of the
village and no demonstration could be made. Until the quiet of a country
road could be reached all had to be formal.

"Oh, just the same, Eugene, longing to see you."

She looked into his eyes and he felt the impact of that emotional force
which governed her when she was near him. There was something in the
chemistry of her being which roused to blazing the ordinarily dormant
forces of his sympathies. She tried to conceal her real feeling--to
pretend gaiety and enthusiasm, but her eyes betrayed her. Something
roused in him now at her look--a combined sense of emotion and desire.

"It's so fine to be out in the country again," he said, pressing her
hand, for he was letting her drive. "After the city, to see you and the
green fields!" He looked about at the little one-storey cottages, each
with a small plot of grass, a few trees, a neat confining fence. After
New York and Chicago, a village like this was quaint.

"Do you love me just as much as ever?"

She nodded her head. They reached a strip of yellow road, he asking
after her father, her mother, her brothers and sisters, and when he saw
that they were unobserved he slipped his arm about her and drew her head
to him.

"Now we can," he said.

She felt the force of his desire but she missed that note of adoration
which had seemed to characterize his first lovemaking. How true it was
he had changed! He must have. The city had made her seem less
significant. It hurt her to think that life should treat her so. But
perhaps she could win him back--could hold him anyhow.

They drove over toward Okoonee, a little crossroads settlement, near a
small lake of the same name, a place which was close to the Blue house,
and which the Blue's were wont to speak of as "home." On the way Eugene
learned that her youngest brother David was a cadet at West Point now
and doing splendidly. Samuel had become western freight agent of the
Great Northern and was on the way to desirable promotion. Benjamin had
completed his law studies and was practising in Racine. He was
interested in politics and was going to run for the state legislature.
Marietta was still the gay carefree girl she ha