ll had
Lafe's smile, the baby to croon over, and dear, stoical Peggy. They
would live with her in the old home. It was preferable to staying in
Bellaire, where her heart would be tortured daily. Rather the brooding
hills, the singing pines, and all the wildness of nature, which was
akin to the struggle within her, and perhaps in the future she might
gather up the broken threads of her life.

She shook as if attacked with ague as she came within sight of the
gaunt farmhouse, and the broken windows and hanging doors gave her a
sense of everlasting decay.

Below her in the valley lay the blue lake, a shining spread of water,
quiet and silent, here and there upon it the shadow of a floating,
fluffy cloud. She listened to the nagging chatter of the squirrels,
mingled with the fluttering of the forest birds high above her head.
As she stood on the hill, the only human being in all the wilderness
about, in fancy she seemed to be at the very top of the world.

She heard the old familiar voices of the mourning pines, and
remembered their soothing magic, and a stinging reproach swept over
her at the thought of her forgetfulness of them. They had been friends
when no other friends were near. Along with the flood of memories came
Matty's ghastly ghost stories and her past belief that her mother's
spirit hovered near her.

She went through the lane leading to the house and paused under the
trees. Presently she placed her violin box and suitcase on the grass
and lay down beside them. In the eaves of the house a dove cooed his
late afternoon love to his mate, and Jinnie, because she was very
young and very much in love, brought Theodore before her with that
lingering retrospection that takes possession in such sensuous
moments. She could feel again the hot tremor of his hands as they
clung to hers, and she bent her head in shame at the acute,
electrifying sensations. He belonged to another woman; he no longer
belonged to her. She must conquer her love for him, and at that moment
every desire to study, every thought of work seemed insipid and
useless. The whole majestic beauty of the scene, her sudden coming
into a great deal of money, did not add to her happiness. She would
gladly give it all up to be again with her loves of yesterday. But
that could not be! The future lay in a hard, straight line before her.
She was striving against a ceaseless, resisting force,--the force of
her whole passionate nature.

With their usual relu