d, ain't it grand in the country?" cried Billy.

She nodded and patted his shoulder. When his mother called him away she
said:

"I hope you won't mind Billy."

"Mind him--why should I? You get such strange ideas of me."

Days of perfect weather followed, when the garden and the sea called
every moment.

"It is only by sheer force of will that I am getting our belongings
unpacked," said Jane, as they lingered after lunch on the veranda.

"Hang our belongings! Get your hat and come for a ramble. This day is a
gift, it will never come again."

She picked up her hat and staff.

"Lead off," she smiled.

"Ten minutes for my cigarette," he begged.

She stretched out on a _chaise-longue_ in sheer physical delight.

"I feel like a turtle, a slow, lethargic turtle," sighed Jerry. "Why do
mortals waste time in work, when Nature offers this nirvana?"

"It wouldn't seem nirvana without work."

"Jane, you have a practical turn of mind. You do not relax into the
proper state of nature, naked and unashamed."

"If I were any more relaxed mentally or physically than I am at this
minute, I would fall to pieces," she answered lazily.

"Jane, I am really getting to like you very much," he said, his eyes
upon her fine repose.

"Is that luck, or a calamity, I wonder?"

"Jane Judd, you ungrateful feline, come along to the sea. I may push you
in for that remark."

So it happened that because of their absolute isolation and dependence
upon each other, they began to be acquainted. Only a few of the summer
people had arrived, so they met no one on their walks. To Jane it was a
time of great peace. She was doing her work now, when she merely kept
herself in health. For the rest, life hung suspended, until October.
Jerry was happy, a charming companion. As she wrote Christiansen: "Life
is wonderful to me now. I am like the bee, garnering the very heart of
summer days, flowers, and sunshine, to put into my work."

Jerry began to paint her in the garden where she spent many hours at her
sewing. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they were speechless. When she
sat for a long time silent, and he spoke to her, she lifted eyes to him
with an expression which he could not fathom. He knew, though, that it
was something elemental, primal; that if he could catch it on his
canvas, every man and woman who looked at the picture would get that
thrill which it gave him--would know that they had glimpsed woman, the
creator.

"Jane," he said