t
time when I learned who made the music that I thought must be the
'Voices,' that time I climbed up to see."

They sat under the great cedars on a bank of moss, and David took the
flute from her hand, smiling as he thought of that moment when he had
stood among the blossoming laurel and watched her as she moved about his
cabin, the day before his hurt, and how she had kissed it.

"I used to sit here like this." She bent forward and rested her head on
his knee. She had a way of putting her two hands together as a child is
taught to hold them in prayer and placing them beneath her cheek; and so
she waited while David paused, his hand on her hair, and his eyes fixed
on the sea of hilltops where they melted into the sky,--a mysterious,
undulating line of the faintest blue, seen through the arching branches
above, and the swaying hemlocks on either side, and over the tops of a
hundred varieties of pines and deciduous trees beneath them, all down
the long slope up which they had climbed.

Thus they waited, until she lifted her head and looked into his eyes
questioningly. He bent forward and kissed her lips and then lifted the
flute to his own--but again paused.

"What are you thinking now, David?" she asked.

"So you really thought it was the 'Voices'? What was their message,
Cassandra?"

"I couldn't make it out then, but I thought of this place and of father,
and it was all at once like as if he would make me know something, and
I prayed God would he lead me to understand was it a message or not. So
that was the way I kept on following--until I--"

"You came to me, dear?"

"Yes."

"And what did you think the interpretation was then?"

"Yes, it was you--you, David. It was love--and hope--and
gladness--everything, everything--"

"Go on."

"Everything good and beautiful--but--sometimes it comes again--"

"What comes?"

"Play, David, play. I'll tell you another time in another place, not
here. No, no."

So he played for her until the dusk deepened around and below them, and
they had to make their way back stumblingly. When they came to the wild,
untrodden bank of the little river, David resigned the choosing of their
path entirely to her and followed close, holding her hand where she led.
When at last they reached their cabin, they did not light candles, but
sat long in the doorway conversing on the deep things of their souls.

It still seemed to David as if she held something back from him, and now
he beg