Harlson said he would call for her and that they would go fishing.  And they went.

The light is tawny upon the lily-pods in shady places on the river.  And rods, such as are used for bass, are light upon the wrist, and, in the lazy hours of mid-afternoon, when bass bite rarely, demand but slight attention.  And two people idling in a boat get very close in thought together and come soon to know each other well.  And a ruthless young man of twenty and a tempestuous woman of thirty are as the conventional tow and tinder.

And there were books she had never read in Mrs. Rolfston’s library—­for she was not a woman of books—­which interested Harlson, and it was easier to read them there than take them home.  And Mrs. Rolfston waited upon him—­how gifted is a woman of thirty—­and he felt bands upon him, and liked it, and would not reason to himself concerning it.

And one night, late, came a panting servant—­Mrs. Rolfston had no men, only two women domestics, with her in her home—­to say that her mistress had heard some one evidently attempting to open a window on the piazza, and that they were all in fear of their lives, and that she had fled out of the back way to ask Mr. Harlson the elder, or his son, to come over at once and look around.

The father laughed, and said that, had there been a burglar, he must have fled already, and the young man, laughing too, said that some one must go anyhow, in all courtesy to defenseless women, and that if Mrs. Rolfston feared for her front porch, he would lie upon a blanket in the lawn beside it to set her mind at rest.  He had not slept beneath the stars alone, he said, since the family had left the farm.  And there was much laughing, and Harlson took home the servant girl, and she, growing bold as they approached the house, ran up the path ahead of him.  The lawn between the better house and street in the lake country town is often a little forest, so dense the trees and their foliage.  And added to the fragrance of the leaves in later midsummer are the mingled odors of petunias and pinks and rosemary and bergamot and musk, for all these flourish late.  And the moon comes through the tree-tops in splashes, and there is a softness and a shade, and it is all like a scented garden in some old Arabian story, and the senses are affected and, maybe, the reason.  Harlson went up the path, half dreaming, yet alive in every vein.  There was no burglar visible, but a wonderful woman, in fleecy dishabille, was sure she had heard a sound most sinister, and endangered women must be guarded of the strong.

And Grant Harlson returned not home that night; yet the moon, shining through the trees, revealed no form upon a blanket in the garden.

And the summer days drifted by; and the young man fresh from college, full of ambitions and dreams, found himself a creature he had never known, a something conscience-stricken, yet half-abandoned, and with a leaden weight upon his feet to keep them from carrying him away from the temptation.