Sylvia had formed the habit of stealing away in the long twilights, after the cheerful gathering at Mrs. Owen’s supper-table, for a little self-communing.  Usually Mrs. Owen and Professor Kelton fell to talking of old times and old friends at this hour and Sylvia’s disappearances were unremarked.  She felt the joy of living these days, and loved dearly the delaying hour between day and night that is so lovely, so touched with poetry in this region.  There was always a robin’s vesper song, that may be heard elsewhere than in Indiana, but can nowhere else be so tremulous with joy and pain.  A little creek ran across Mrs. Owen’s farm, cutting for itself a sharp defile to facilitate its egress into the lake; and Sylvia liked to throw herself down beside a favorite maple, with the evening breeze whispering over the young corn behind her, and the lake, with its heart open to the coming of the stars, quiet before her, and dream the dreams that fill a girl’s heart in those blessed and wonderful days when the brook and river meet.

On this Saturday evening Sylvia was particularly happy.  The day’s activities, that had begun late, left her a little breathless.  She was wondering whether any one had ever been so happy, and whether any other girl’s life had ever been so pleasantly ordered.  Her heartbeat quickened as she thought of college and the busy years that awaited her there; and after that would come the great world’s wide-open doors.  She was untouched by envy, hatred, or malice.  There was no cloud anywhere that could mar; the stars that stole out into the great span of sky were not more tranquil than her own heart.  The world existed only that people might show kindness one to another, and that all this beauty of wood, field, water, and starry sky might bring joy to the souls of men.  She knew that there was evil in the world; but she knew it from books and not from life.  Her path had fallen in pleasant places, and only benignant spirits attended her.

She was roused suddenly by the sound of steps in the path beneath.  This twilight sanctuary had never been invaded before, and she rose hastily.  The course of an irregular path that followed the lake was broken here by the creek’s miniature chasm, but adventurous pedestrians might gain the top and continue over a rough rustic bridge along the edge of Mrs. Owen’s cornfield.  Sylvia peered down, expecting to see Marian or Blackford, but a stranger was approaching, catching at bushes to facilitate his ascent.  Sylvia stepped back, assuming it to be a cottager who had lost his way.  A narrow-brimmed straw hat rose above the elderberry bushes, and with a last effort the man stood on level ground, panting from the climb.  He took off his hat and mopped his face as he glanced about.  Sylvia had drawn back, but as the stranger could not go on without seeing her she stepped forward, and they faced each other, in a little plot of level ground beside the defile.