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be alone together. They were sure of being alone in Tramp’s Woods.
    “Are you afraid?” she had asked him, laughing.
    “Not with you,” he had answered, and laughed back at her.
    Now that her own little home turned partly to these woods she found it a place beautiful and untroubled, and sometimes in an afternoon, waiting for Mark to come home, she wandered among the outer trees, half remembering the old story, but not afraid of it any more because she and Mark had made it their own. It was a strange wood, so silent, the wild flowers untouched. She never saw anyone else there.
    But even she did not go there often. For there was always something to do to her house. It was never really done, though the day after they came home, when all their friends came to see them, they had said warmly, “I don’t see how you’ve done it, Sue.” “Why, it looks as though you had lived here years!” And she and Mark, laughing, hand in hand, were drenched in their own profound simple happiness, and they received this admiration as part of it. They had done nothing extraordinary, because everybody got married, and their home they knew was small, and yet they felt successful beyond all their fellows.
    When everybody was gone that first night they made a tour of the whole house together, to make sure, to see it all again—living room, dining room, kitchen, hall, the stairs, two bedrooms and Mark’s little study and the small yellow-tiled bathroom. Mark was going up the attic stairs, but she stopped him.
    “Don’t let’s go up,” she cried. “There’s nothing there. I haven’t even thought what I’m going to do up there yet.”
    It was true she had not even been there since she had carried up the unfinished head and her working tools. So they turned and went downstairs again, and to see if the chimney in the living room really drew, Mark lit a fire. It was not necessary, for the night was so mild they left the door open, and down the street they could see the lights popping out into the darkness, the lights of the homes of their friends. It was lovely, lovely. She felt a gayety that rose from the walls of her life, lights and friends and home and Mark, her husband. Down the street, around the corner, were her parents and Mary and all her happy childhood, her so nearly quite happy childhood. She was very lucky. Why had her father said goodbye to her? She had not had to leave anything behind when she came away with Mark. It was all there. If she wanted to, she could run down that street, turn that corner, open the door and be back in her childhood.
    But she did not want to go back to anything. She turned to Mark eagerly, fully. “I’m happy!” she whispered. They sat down before their fire, warmed and fed. “Oh, that will be—glory for me—” she sang under her breath.
    Mark laughed. “The first time I ever heard you sing that,” he said, “you were five years old and you were making a dress for a doll, on the top step of the porch.”
    “Was I?” she cried. “You darling, to remember!”
    “You don’t know when you sing it, do you? Any more?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “It comes out of me,” she answered.
    To part in the morning was such pain that they dreaded it from the moment she poured Mark his second cup of coffee. Then he looked at the clock.
    “Ten minutes,” he said solemnly.
    She flew to turn the clock around so its face could not be seen, and then she pushed her chair against his. At this moment she felt the house would be intolerably empty without him.
    “If only you did something at home,” she said wistfully. “If you were a painter or a writer—”
    “You’ve married an everyday chap,” Mark said soberly, stirring his coffee. “I’m afraid I’ll be going to office as long as I live, Sue.”
    “There’s only one of you in the world,” she said quickly, and bent to kiss his hand. She looked at him acutely, intensely. “I have to remember you for three and a half hours,” she