And in proportion as they lost their power to interest him the home on

the mountain-side, beyond reach of the city's heat and dust and clamor,

drew him with increasing and irresistible force. Never before had it

seemed to him so attractive, so beautiful, so homelike as now. He did

not stop to ask himself wherein its new charm consisted or to analyze

the sense of relief and gladness with which he turned his face homeward

when the day's work was ended. He only felt vaguely that the silent,

undemonstrative love which the old place had so long held for him had

suddenly found expression. It smiled to him from the flowers nodding

gayly to him as he passed; it echoed in the tinkling music of the

fountains; the murmuring pines whispered it to him as their fragrant

breath fanned his cheek; but more than all he read it in the brown eyes

which grew luminous with welcome at his approach and heard it in the

low, sweet voice whose wonderful modulations were themselves more

eloquent than words. And with this interpretation of the strange, new

joy day by day permeating his whole life, he went his way in deep

content.

And to Kate Underwood this summer seemed the brightest and the fairest

of all the summers of her young life; why, she could not have told,

except that the skies were bluer, the sunlight more golden, and the

birds sang more joyously than ever before.

In a mining town like Ophir there was comparatively little society for

her, so that most of her evenings were spent at home, and she and

Darrell were of necessity thrown much together. Sometimes he joined her

in a game of tennis, a ride or drive or a short mountain ramble;

sometimes he sat on the veranda with the elder couple, listening while

she played and sang; but more often their voices blended, while the

wild, plaintive notes of the violin rose and fell on the evening air

accompanied by the piano or by the guitar or mandolin. Together they

watched the sunsets or walked up and down the mountain terrace in the

moonlight, enjoying to the full the beauty around them, neither as yet

dreaming that,--more than their joy in the bloom and beauty and

fragrance, in the music of the fountains or the murmuring voices of the

pines, in the sunset's glory, or the moonlight's mystical

radiance,--above all, deeper than all, pervading all, was their joy in

each other. Hers was a nature essentially childlike; his very infirmity

rendered him in experience less than a child; and so, devoid of worldly

wisdom,--like Earth's first pair of lovers, without knowledge of good or

evil,--all unconsciously they entered their Eden.




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