pless, unconcealed.

Trembling, she sat down on a low, flat stone, for she had suddenly
become too weak to stand. Much to her dismay, Alden swung the head of
the boat toward the shore. They were going to land!

Mute and frightened, she watched him as he assisted her to the shore,
saw him return to the boat for a basket covered with a white cloth, and
draw the oars up to the bank.

Rosemary instantly comprehended the emotions of an animal in a trap. She
scarcely dared to breathe, much less move. Unwilling to listen, she put
her fingers in her ears and turned her head away, but presently the
position became so strained and uncomfortable that she had to give it
up. Their voices were plainly audible.

[Sidenote: A Picnic]

"I thought I heard a rustle behind that thicket," said Edith. She was
lovely in her gown of pale green linen, and carried a white linen
parasol instead of wearing a hat.

"It's a bird, or a squirrel," he assured her. "Nobody ever comes here."

"Are we nobody?"

"Indeed not--we're everybody. The world was made just for us two."

"I wish I could believe you," Edith returned, sadly. Then she added,
with swift irrelevance: "Why do people always take hard-boiled eggs to
picnics?"

"To mitigate the pickles," he responded. "There always are pickles--see?
I knew Mother would put some in."

"Wine, too," commented Edith, peering into the basket. "Why, it's almost
a party!"

Alden's face took on a grave, sweet boyishness. "I did that myself," he
said. "Mother didn't know. Wait until I tell you. The day I was born, my
father set aside all the wine that was that day ready for bottling.
There wasn't much of it. All these years, it's been untouched on one
particular shelf in the storeroom, waiting, in dust and cobwebs. At
sunset he went to Mother, and told her what he had done. 'It's for the
boy,' he said. 'It's to be opened the day he finds the woman he loves as
I love you.'"

"And--" Edith's voice was almost a whisper.

[Sidenote: The Time Has Come]

"The time has come. I may have found her only to lose her again, but
she's mine--for to-day."

He filled two small glasses, and, solemnly, they drank. The light mood
vanished as surely as though they had been in a church, at some unwonted
communion. Behind the leafy screen, Rosemary trembled and shook. She
felt herself sharply divided into a dual personality. One of her was
serene and calm, able to survey the situation unemotionally, as though
it wer