Down the street suddenly sounded a car. Not the rattling, cheap affairs

that were commonly used in those parts for hard work and dress affairs,

with a tramp snuffle and bark as they bounced along beneath the maples

like house dogs that knew their business and made as much noise about

it as they could; but a car with a purr like a soft petted cat by the

fire, yet a power behind the purr that might have belonged to a lion if

the need for power arose. It stole down the street like a thing of the

world, well oiled and perfect in its way, and not needing to make any

clatter about its going. The very quietness of it made the minister

look up, sent the minister's wife to raise the shade of the sitting-room

window, and caused the girl to look up from her task.

The morning flooded her face, the song was stayed, a great light came

into her eyes.

The man who was driving the car had the air of not expecting to stop at

the parsonage. Even when he saw the girl on the porch he held to his

way, and something hard and cold and infinitely sad settled down over

his face. It even looked as though he did not intend to recognize her,

or perhaps wasn't sure whether she would recognize him. There was a

moment's breathless suspense and the car slid just the fraction past

the gate in the hedge, without a sign of stopping, only a lifting of a

correct looking straw hat that somehow seemed a bit out of place in

Sabbath Valley. But Lynn left no doubt in his mind whether she would

recognize him. She dropped her broom and sped down the, path, and the

car came to an abrupt halt, only a hair's breadth past the gate,--but

still--that hair's breadth.

"Oh, Mark, I'm so glad to see you!" she cried genuinely with her hand

out in welcome, "They said you were not at home."

The boy's voice--he had been a boy when she left him, though now he

looked strangely hard and old like a man of the world--was husky as he

answered gravely, swinging himself down on the walk beside her: "I just got in late last night. How are you Lynn? You're looking fine."

He took her offered hand, and clasped it for a brief instant in a warm

strong pressure, but dropped it again and there was a quick cold

withdrawing of his eyes that she did not understand. The old Mark

Carter would never have looked at her coolly, impersonally like that.

What was it, was he shy of her after the long separation? Four years

was a long time, of course, but there had been occasional letters. He

had always been away when she was at home, and she had been home very

little between her school years. There had been summer sessions twice

and once father and mother had come to her and they had taken a

wonderful trip together. But always there had seemed to be Mark Carter,

her old friend and playmate, in the background. Now, suddenly he seemed

to be removed to indefinite distances. It was as if she were looking at

a picture that purported to be her friend, yet seemed a travesty, like

one wearing a mask. She stood in the sunlight looking at him, in her

quaint little cap and a long white enveloping house apron, and she

seemed to him like a haloed saint. Something like worship shone in his

eyes, but he kept the mask down, and looked at her with the eyes of a

stranger while he talked, and smiled a stiff conventional smile. But a

look of anguish grew in his young face, like the sorrow of something

primeval, such as a great rock in a desert.




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