arman; it was the full two weeks the nurse had
allotted for his remaining in the hospital before he saw her alone.

They had brought him home, the day before--she and her father, in the
motor--to the house on Astor Street. He had insisted on returning
there, refusing the room in their house which they had offered; but the
doctor had enjoined outdoors and moderate exercise for him, and she had
made him promise to come and walk with her. He went to the Sherrill
house about ten o'clock, and they walked northward toward the park.

It was a mild, sunny morning with warm wind from the south, which
sucked up the last patches of snow from the lawns and dried the tiny
trickles of water across the walks. Looking to the land, one might say
that spring soon would be on the way; but, looking to the lake,
midwinter held. The counterscrap of concrete, beyond the withered sod
that edged the Drive, was sheathed in ice; the frozen spray-hummocks
beyond steamed in the sun; and out as far as one could see, floes
floated close together, exposing only here and there a bit of blue.
Wind, cold and chilling, wafted off this ice field, taking the warm
south breeze upon its flanks.

Glancing up at her companion from time to time, Constance saw the color
coming to his face, and he strode beside her quite steadily. Whatever
was his inheritance, his certainly were stamina and vitality; a little
less--or a little dissipation of them--and he might not have recovered
at all, much less have leaped back to strength as he had done. For
since yesterday, the languor which had held him was gone.

They halted a minute near the south entrance of the park at the St.
Gaudens' "Lincoln," which he had not previously seen. The gaunt, sad
figure of the "rail-splitter" in his ill-fitting clothes, seemed to
recall something to him; for he glanced swiftly at her as they turned
away.

"Miss Sherrill," he asked, "have you ever stayed out in the country?"

"I go to northern Michigan, up by the straits, almost every summer for
part of the time, at least; and once in a while we open the house in
winter too for a week or so. It's quite wild--trees and sand and shore
and the water. I've had some of my best times up there."

"You've never been out on the plains?"

"Just to pass over them on the train on the way to the coast."

"That would be in winter or in spring; I was thinking about the plains
in late summer, when we--Jim and Betty, the children of the peo