I wonder if Sallie will marry him.

And as I sat and thought and puzzled, the moonlight got richer and more glowing, and it wooed open the throats of the thousand little honeysuckle blossoms, clinging to the vine on the trellis, until they poured out a perfect symphony of perfume to mingle in a hallelujah from the lilacs and roses that ascended to the very stars themselves.

I had dropped my head on my arms, and let my eyes go roaming out to the dim hills that banked against the radiant sky, when somebody seated himself beside me, and a whiff of tobacco blew across my face, sweet with having joined in the honeysuckle chorus.  Nobody said a word for a long time, and then I looked up and laughed into the deep, gray eyes looking tenderly down into mine.  With a thrill I realized that there was one man in the world I could offer the chalice to and trust him to drink—­moderately.

“Jamie,” I said in a voice as young as it used to be when I trailed at his heels, “thank you for letting me be contrary and independent and puzzling.  I have been busy adventuring with life, in queer places and with people not like—­like us.  Now I want a little of real living and to think—­and feel.  May I?”

“You may, dear,” the Crag answered in a big comfortable voice, that was a benediction in itself.  “I understood last night when you told me that you wanted to come home alone.  I can trust Jasper with you, and I am going to sleep down at the lodge room, right across the road here, so I can hear you if you even think out loud.  No one shall worry you about it any more.  Now will you promise to be happy?”

I could not answer him, I was so full of a deepness of peace.  I just laid my cheek against the sleeve of his queer old gray coat, to show him what I could not say.

He let me do it, and went on smoking without noticing me.

Then, after a little while, he began to tell me all about Father and his death, that had come so suddenly while he seemed as well as ever, and how he had worried about my probably not wanting to be left to him, and that he wanted me to feel independent, but to please let him do all that I would to help me, and not to feel that I was alone with nobody to love me.  That he was always there, and would be forever and ever.

And he did stay so late that Jasper had to send him home!

There is such a thing as a man’s being a father and mother and grown sister and brother and a college-chum and a preacher of the Gospel and a family physician to a woman—­with no possibility of being her husband either.  She wouldn’t so drag such a man from his high estate as to think of such a worldly relation in connection with him.

I have certainly collected some phenomena in the reaction of a woman’s heart this day.  Did you choose me wisely for these experiments, Jane?

It takes a woman of nerve to go to housekeeping in a tinder-box, when she isn’t sure she even knows what flint is when she sees it, and might strike out a spark without intending it at all.