It was about five of the warm September day when he came to the old log-house.  Smiling as he recalled the memories of his childhood, he went into the cabin and found its shelter pleasant and the cooling air of evening grateful.  He took off his game bag, laid it on the floor, set his gun against the wall, and glad of a rest sat down.  Having enjoyed his first smoke of the day, he let his head drop on the floor, and by no means intending it fell asleep.

Leila too was in a happier mood, and sure of not meeting John set out to walk through the forest.  After a pleasant loitering stroll she stopped at the cabin door, and as she glanced in saw John Penhallow asleep.  She leaned against the door post and considered the motionless sleeper in the shadows of the closing day.  She was alone with him—­alone as never before.  He would neither question nor make answer.  Strange thoughts came into her mind, disturbing, novel.  How could he sleep without a pillow?  It must be an army habit after tent-less nights of exhaustion in the deadly trenches.  People—­men—­had tried to kill this living silent thing before her; and he too—­he too had wanted to kill.  She wondered at that as with the motion of a will-less automaton she drew nearer step by step.  Her feet unwatched struck the half-filled game-bag.  She stumbled, caught her breath, and had a moment of fear as she hung the bag on the wooden hook upon which as a child she used to hang her sun-bonnet.

Then again some natural yearning moved her, and unresisting as in a dream she drew still nearer—­merely a woman in an unguarded moment once again under the control of a great passion which knew no social rule of conduct nor the maiden modesties of a serenely dutiful life.  At each approach, she stood still, unashamed, innocent of guile, thrilling with emotion which before in quiet hours had been felt as no more disturbing than the wandering little breezes which scarcely stir the leafage of the young spring.  She stood still until she won bodily mastery of this stormy influence with its faintly conveyed sense of maiden terror.  Her thoughts wandered as she looked down on the sleeper.  In voiceless self-whispered speech she said, “Ah me! he used to be so vexed when I said he was too young to ask me—­a woman—­to marry him.  How young he looks now!” The wounded arm forever crippled lay across his breast.  She caught her breath.  “I wonder,” she thought, “if we get younger in sleep—­and then age in the daytime.  Good Heavens! he is smiling like a baby.  Oh! but I should like to know what he is thinking of.”  There was unresisted fascination in the little drama of passionate love so long repressed.