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to minister to my wants. Come, don’t let’s quarrel. Is that a cup custard that I see? Mother Brooke’s cup custard as I live! What a feast! Lynn, was there ever a day so good as this one?”
    Lynette tried to smile, handed out the wonders of the lunch basket bit by bit, ate scarcely anything herself, and wondered what had gone wrong with her day. What did this vague uneasiness in her heart mean? Of course Dana was more or less joking, as he always did, and all this talk meant nothing at all. Didn’t she know him of old? He was earnestness itself, and this was only a glorified way of trying to show her he was going to take special care of her.
    Yet after all when they had packed up the basket and picked up the bits of waxed paper to leave the woods tidy as they had found it, she had a vague feeling of hurry, as if Dana’s mind was not on the day. He had said nothing about the ring either. How often she had pictured the time to herself when he would bring it out of his pocket in its little velvet case and place it upon her finger! He had told her it was to be the best diamond he could find, and though she had hushed his talk about it then, she had pondered much in her heart all that he had spoken.
    Yet the day was bright, and it was to be longer. Doubtless he would wait till evening. There would be a moon. Perhaps he would wait till the shadows hid them out in the garden somewhere, although she had always thought of the ring in connection with this spot, their trysting place, where he as a boy of nineteen had spoken his first eager tempestuous words of love. How they had grown in her heart with her life through the years, till now she was waiting for their confirmation with a heart so full of answering love and exultation that it almost choked her to think about it as he talked on.
    She was very quiet during the rest of the time that they stayed on the mountain, but he was so full of eager speech himself that he did not notice it. And when he looked at his watch and said impatiently that it was time to go, she got up with a smile, in a kind of daze of joy, for somehow the trouble had gone from her heart and she had got to the place where she could look up and wait and smile for the joy that was coming to her. Oh, he was wonderful! She looked at him with all her soul in her eyes as they stood up ready to go and the late afternoon sun touched the crest of his dark hair and gave his face a statuesque look. What a wonderful minister he was going to make! How stunning he would look in the pulpit! But of course she must not think of that. It was his great spirit that she almost adored, his consecrated young spirit that was joyously giving up all the fine prospects he might have had in the world to devote his life to the ministry.
    And then he took her in his arms, almost hungrily, she thought, and then fiercely, as if he could not get enough of her sweetness. He laid his lips on her hair, on her forehead, and she closed her eyes and dropped her face against his breast, feeling it was so good to be there at last in his strong arms. Yes, it was good as all her dreams had been. And at last his lips found hers, and it seemed as if all the promises of all the years of her young life had come to consummation now, in that one strong, tender kiss.
    And yet, when he finally freed her and they started down the mountain hand in hand, her cheeks rosy, her eyes downcast, there was something almost frightening in the thought of his embrace; it had been so strong and fierce, as if her whole being were submerged and changed into his. As if she might not be allowed to be her own self anymore. What did it mean? Was it just life? Was life always like that? So startling?
    She was pondering these things when they came to Round Hill, a lovely eminence that rose in perfect symmetry between two higher hills and burst upon one unexpectedly at a turn in the road.
    Lynette remembered a time in her little girlhood when the hill had been covered with