was deep; the goldenrod waved its imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river chattered and sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighorhood, and then, lapsing into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found a vent for its spirits in the dashing and splashing of the falls. Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then wood-cutting; then eternal successions of plowing, sowing, reaping, haying, logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days. Here and there a red or a yellow branch, painted only yesterday, caught his eye and made him shiver. He was not[Pg 172] ready for winter; his heart still craved the summer it had missed. [Pg 172] Hello! What was that? Corn-stalks prone on the earth? Sign torn down and lying flat in the grass? Blinds open, fire in the chimney? He leaped from the wagon, and, flinging the reins to Alcestis Crambry, said, “Stay right here out of sight, and don’t you move till I call you!” and striding up the green pathway, flung open the kitchen door. A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back, morning-glories clambering round and round the window-frames, table with shining white cloth, kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a pan on the stove, fire throwing out sweet little gleams of welcome through the open damper. All this was taken in with one incredulous, rapturous twinkle of an eye; but something else, too: Rose of all roses, Rose of the river, Rose of the world, standing behind a chair, her hand pressed against her[Pg 173] heart, her lips parted, her breath coming and going! She was glowing like a jewel, glowing with the extraordinary brilliancy that emotion gives to some women. She used to be happy in a gay, sparkling way, like the shallow part of the stream as it chatters over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun. [Pg 173] “Don’t speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good deal of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how sorry I am, and it’s the only way.” She was trembling, and the words came faster and faster. “I’ve been very wrong and foolish, and made you very unhappy, but I haven’t done what you would have hated most. I haven’t been engaged to Claude Merrill; he hasn’t so much as asked me. I am here to beg you to forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me to the
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