e and a four-dollars-an-hour masseuse
forcing her sluggish blood to flow.

Eddie Blaney gently helped Sara to alight, cupping the point of her
elbow in his hand; and they stood huddled for a moment by the roadway
while the car whizzed past, leaving them in the yellow and ocher,
saffron and crimson, countryside.

"Gee! Gee whiz!"

"See! I told you. And you not wanting to come when I called for you this
morning--you trying to dodge me and the swellest Indian-summer Sunday on
the calendar!"

"Looka!"

"Wait! We 'ain't started yet, if you think this is swell."

"Oh! Let's go over in them woods. Let's." Her lips were apart and pink
crept into her cheeks, effacing the dark rims of pain beneath her eyes.

"Let's hurry."

"Sure; that's where we're going--right over in there, where the woods
look like they're on fire; but, gee! this ain't nothing to the country
places I know round here. This ain't nothing. Wait!"

The ardor of the inspired guide was his, and with each exclamation from
her the joy of his task doubled itself.

"If you think this is great, wait--just you wait. Gee! if you like this,
what would you have said to the farm? Wait till we get to the top of the
hill."

Fallen leaves, crisp as paper, crackled pleasantly under their feet; and
through the haze that is October's veil glowed a reddish sun, vague as
an opal. A footpath crawled like a serpent through the woods and they
followed it, kicking up the leaves before them, pausing, darting,
exclaiming.

"I--Honest, Mr. Blaney, I--"

"Eddie!"

"Eddie, I--I never did feel so--I never was so--so--Aw, I can't say it."
Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Sure you never was. I never was, neither, before--before--"

"Before what?"

"Before I had to."

"Had to?"

"Yeh; both of them. Bleeding all the time. Didn't see nothing but red
for 'leven months."

"You!"

"Yeh; three years ago. Looked like Arizona on a stretcher for me."

"You--so big and strong and all!"

He smiled at her and his teeth flashed. "Gad! little girl, if you got a
right to be scared, whatta you think I had? I seen your card over at the
clinic last night, and you 'ain't got no right to have that down-and-out
look on you had this morning. If you think you got something to be
scared at you looka my old card at the clinic some day; they keep it for
show. You oughtta seen me the day I quit the shipping-room, right over
at the Titanic, too, and then see whether you got something to be scare