life.  I looked up to the deep, cloudless sky, around at the wide stretch of green in the golden sunlight, then almost unconsciously back once more to the edge of the woods, where the spread rugs made a tiny home fit for the heart of summertide.  Nor did I guess, even then, which was the dominant note of this wonderful chord that my life had unconsciously struck.  I knew only that the world was far more beautiful than I had ever dreamed, and still singing under my breath the little cadence that seemed to fit the day, I wandered slowly back, leaving a path crushed between the tall, sun-faded grasses as I went.

Mr. Longworth laid down his work as I approached.  A strange, absurd shyness possessed me, after the weeks of strengthening friendship and simple good-fellowship, but I held out the great bunch of daisies playfully to him, as I seated myself on the pile of rugs.  He reached his hand for them eagerly, and buried his face in their sunny depths.

His eyes shone feverishly with his stress of work, and his thin cheeks were flushed.  “You look tired,” I said.  “You should not write so long.”

Thus far, though we had often jested about it, we had never read each other portions of our work.

“When I get mine half done,” I had said, when he begged me to read him a chapter.

“When I can manage to make a chapter run smoothly to its end,” he had replied laughing, in turn, but now to-day, urged by some necessity for an absorbing topic into which I could plunge, losing my restlessness, I insisted that he should read fragments, at least, to me.

He demurred at first.  “I have told you how stupid it sounds, these disconnected bits, little descriptions, detached conversations.  Sometimes I think I shall never use them after all.”  He fingered the pages absently.

“No, read it to me as it is,” I begged.  “I must hear it.  I understand, of course, how it is written.”

And so, yielding to my entreaties, he read, while I leaned back against the tree trunk, listening at first critically, and interested, perhaps, because it was his work, then with clasped hands and shortening breath, leaning forward that I might lose no word.  A little squirrel scampered through the undergrowth back of us, and far in another field I could hear Mr. Hopper’s quavering voice, as he called to the haymakers.  Sometimes a leaf rustled, falling to the ground, but it was very quiet.

At last he laid down the leaves, and fixed his dark eyes eagerly on my face, as if he would read my thoughts, but my eyes were full of tears, and they were selfish tears.  “My poor book!” I said, with a tender contempt for it.

“Do you mean—?” he began increduously.