Week after week, now, Ray began to occupy himself about the house more and more, resuming in succession odd little jobs that during all this time had remained unfinished as on the day he went.  He seemed desirous of taking up the days exactly as he had left them, of bridging over this gap and chasm, of ignoring the fatal summer.  Something so dreadful had fallen into his life that it could not assimilate itself with the tissues of daily existence.  The work must be slow that would volatilize such a black body of horror till it leavened all the being into power and grace undreamed of before.

But little Jane did not philosophize upon what she was so glad to see; she hailed every sign of outside interest as a symptom of returning health, and gave him a thousand occasions.  Yesterday there were baskets to braid, and to-day he must initiate her in the complications of a dozen difficult sailor’s-knots that he knew, and to-morrow there would be woodchuck-traps to make and show her how to set.  For Janet’s chief vexation had overtaken her in the absence of fresh eggs for breakfast, an absence that would be enduring, unless the small game of the forest could be lured into her snares and parcelled among the apathetic hens.  Many were the recipes and the consultations on the subject, till at last Ray wrote out for her, in black-letter, a notice to be pinned up in the sight of every delinquent:  “Twelve eggs, or death!” Whether it were the frozen rabbit-meat flung among them the day before, or whether it were the timely warning, there is no one to tell; but the next morning twelve eggs lay in the various hiding-places, which Mrs. Vennard declared to be as good eggs as ever were laid, and custards and cookies renewed their reign.  Here, suddenly, Ray remembered the purse in his haversack, containing all his uncounted pay.  It was a weary while that he stayed alone in the cold, leaning over it as if he stared at the thirty pieces of silver, a faint sickness seized him, then hurriedly sweeping it up, with a red spot burning cruelly into either cheek, he brought it down, and emptied it in little Jane’s lap, though he would rather have seen it ground to impalpable dust.  But, after a moment’s thought, the astonished recipient kept it for a use of her own.  Finally, one night, Ray proposed to instruct Janet in some particular branch of his general ignorance; and after those firelight-recitations, little Jane forgot to move her seat away, and her hand was kept in his through all the hour of Vivia’s slow enchantment.

So the cold weather wore away, and spring stole into the scene like a surprise, finding Vivia as the winter found her,—­but Ray still undergoing volcanic changes, now passionless lulls and now rages and spasms of grief:  gradually out of them all he gathered his strength about him.

It was once more a morning of early June, sunrise was blushing over the meadows, and the gossamers of hoar dew lay in spidery veils of woven light and melted under the rosy beams.  From her window one heard Vivia singing, and the strain stole down like the breath of the heavy honeysuckles that trellised her pane:—­