ry hung her scarlet signal to the outstanding bough of the
lowest birch, and went back to the crest of the hill to wait for him.
She had with her the little red book that he had given her long ago, and
which she had not had opportunity to return.

She turned the pages regretfully, though she knew the poems almost by
heart. Days, while she washed dishes and scrubbed, the exquisite melody
of the words haunted her, like some far-off strain of music. For the
first time she had discovered the subtle harmonies of which the language
is capable, entirely apart from sense.

Living lines stood out upon the printed page, glowing with a rapture all
their own.

[Sidenote: Thrilling Lines]

"Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn
Together,"

she read aloud, thrilled by the very sound.

"Tender as dawn's first hill-fire," ... "What marshalled marvels
on the skirts of May," ... "Shadows and shoals that edge
eternity." ...

"Oh," she breathed, "if only I didn't have to give it back!"

"Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,--
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand."

"What, indeed?" thought Rosemary. What was she to Love, or what ever
might she be?

"But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
Up your warm throat to your warm lips: for this" ...

Rosemary put the book down, face to face at last with self-knowledge.
She would have torn down the flaming signal, but it was too late. If he
were coming--and he never had failed to come--he would be there very
soon.

* * * * *

Alden had closed his desk with a sigh as the last pair of restless
little feet tumbled down the schoolhouse steps. Scraps of paper
littered the floor and the room was musty and close in spite of two open
windows. From where he sat, he could see the vineyard, with its
perpetual demand upon him. Since his painful interview with his mother,
he had shrunk, inwardly, from even the sight of the vineyard. It somehow
seemed to have a malicious air about it. Mutely it challenged his
manhood, menaced his soul.

[Sidenote: Uneventful Days]

He had accepted the inevitable but had not ceased to rebel. The coming
years stretched out before him in a procession of grey, uneventful days.
Breakfast, school, luncheon, s