But as she looked again—­Ann was deep in the illustrations of “Days in Florence” and could be surveyed with impunity—­she wondered if she might not have written better than she knew.  Her choice of facts doubtless was preposterous enough; what had been the conflicting elements—­her fancy might wander far afield in finding that.  But she was sure she saw truly in seeing marks of conflict.  Life had pulled her now this way, now that, as if playing some sort of cruel game with her.  And that game had left her very tired.  Tired as some lovely creature of the woods is tired after pursuit, and fearful with that fear of the hunted from which safety cannot rescue.  It was in Ann’s eyes—­that looking out from shadowy retreat, that pain of pain remembered, that fear which fear has left.  Katie had seen it once in the eyes of an exhausted fawn, who, fleeing from the searchers for the stag, had come full upon the waiting hunt—­in face of the frantic hounds in leash.  The terror in those eyes that should have been so soft and gentle, the sick certitude of doom where there should have been the glad joy of life struck the death blow to Katie’s ambitions to become the mighty huntress.  She had never joined another hunt or wished to hear another story of the hunt, saying she flattered herself she could be resourceful enough to gain her pleasures in some other way than crazing gentle creatures with terror.  Ann made her think of that quivering fawn, suggesting, as the fawn had suggested, what life might have been in a woods uninvaded.  She had a vision of Ann as the creature of pure delight she had been fashioned to be, loving life and not knowing fear.

From which musings she broke off with a hearty:  “Good drive!” and Ann looked up inquiringly.

She pointed to the teeing ground some men were just leaving—­caddies straggling on behind, two girls driving in a runabout along the river road calling gaily over to the men.  It all seemed sunny and unfettered as the morning.

“I’ll wager he feels good,” she laughed.  “I know no more exhilarating feeling than that thing of having just made a good drive.  It makes life seem at your feet.  You must play, Ann.  I’m going to teach you.”

“Do all those people belong here?” Ann asked, still looking at the girls who were calling laughingly back and forth to the men.

“On the Island?  Oh, no; they belong over there.”  She nodded to the city which rose upon the hills across the river.  “But they use these links.”

“Don’t they—­don’t they have to—­work?” Ann asked timidly.

“Oh, yes,” laughed Katie; “I fancy most of them work some.  Though what’s the good working a morning like this?  I think they’re very wise.  But look now at the Hope of the Future!  He’s certainly working.”

The Hope of the Future was ascending the steps, heavily burdened.  So heavily was he burdened that for the moment ascent looked impossible.  Each arm was filled with a shapeless bundle of white and yellow fur which closer inspection revealed as the collie pups.