anxious to have them right--"I only meant--I have been
unhappy. No man would have been as unhappy as I have been."

Osmond smiled a little to himself, in grave communing. The uphill road
of his life presented itself to him as a thorny way so hard that, if he
had foreseen it from the beginning, he would have said it was
impossible. But at the same instant he remembered where it had led him:
he had come out into clear air, he was resting in this garden of
delight. And she, too, was resting. He knew that with a perfect
certainty.

"We have begun over," he warned her. "We don't have to remember. See the
moon driving along the sky. We are going with her, fast. Look at her,
playmate."

She looked up into the sky where the moon seemed to be racing past more
stable clouds. It was as if their spiritual gaze met there, to be welded
into a mutual compact. This was the ecstasy of silence. Presently a
sound broke it, a whistle loud and clear from the other field. Osmond
was at once upon his feet.

"Come," he said, "we must go. There's Peter."

"But why must we go?" She was struggling out of her trance of quietude,
almost offended at his haste.

"Come with me. We will meet him in the field. It is too--too splendid,
here. This is our castle under the tree. Don't you know it is? We can't
ask anybody in--not even Peter."

"Not even Peter!" She tried to say it gayly, but a quick sadness fell
upon her as she rose and went with him along the path. The moon had gone
into a cloud, and a breath sprang up. The night was cooler. That other
still langour of too great emotion seemed like something generated by
their souls, and dissipated when they had to come out of the world of
their own creating. All her daily fears rose up before her in
anticipation. She was again alien here in her own land, and Electra was
unkind to her. But there was a strange confidence and strength in
knowing this silent figure was at her side.

"Courage, playmate," he said, as if he knew her thought. "We shall think
this night over, shan't we?"

"Yes. When"--her voice failed her.

"Every night," he said, with an unchanged assurance that amazed her like
the night itself. "I shall be there every night. If you don't come--why,
never mind. If you come"--his voice stopped, as if something choked it.
Then he went on heartily, "The house will be there under the tree, the
playhouse. Nobody will see it by day, you know. Nobody'll run up against
it by night. But you'v