After the dishes were washed, Levine asked Lydia to stroll up the road with him while Amos did his evening chores.  It was dusk when they turned out the gate to the road, Lydia clinging to John’s arm.  A June dusk, with the fresh smell of the lake mingling with the heavy scent of syringa and alder bloom, and of all the world of leafage at the high tide of freshness.  June dusk, with the steady croak of frogs from the meadows and the faint call of whippoorwills from the woods.

John put a long, hard hand over the small thin one on his arm.  “Have you missed me, young Lydia?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “especially as you never came near us after the hearing.”

“How could I come?” asked the man, simply.  “You had weighed me and found me wanting.  There was nothing for me to do but to go ahead and finish my job, as I still saw the right of it.  Have you forgiven me, Lydia?”

“It wasn’t a matter between you and me,” replied the girl, slowly.  “It was between you and your conscience and if your conscience approves, what’s the use of asking me to forgive you?”

“Because, I can’t stand not having your approval,” said Levine.

They strolled on in silence, while Lydia considered her reply.  “No matter if the destroying of the Indians were right, that wouldn’t exonerate the whites for having been cruel and crooked in doing it.  People will always remember it of us.”

Levine gave a laugh that had no mirth in it.  “Lord, who’ll say the New England spirit is dead!  You’re as cold in judging me as one of your ancestors was when he sentenced a witch to be burned.”

“Oh, no!” cried Lydia.  “Dear John Levine, I couldn’t be cold to you.  Nothing could make me love you less.  And you yourself told me to be true to myself.”

John sighed, then said abruptly, “Let’s never discuss it again.  What are you reading now, Lydia?”

“English essayists and Emerson.  I’m crazy about Emerson.  He seems so much more human than Leigh Hunt and De Quincey and the rest of them.  Maybe it’s because he’s an American, so I understand him better.  I think I like Compensation and Friendship the best so far.  I learned one thing from Friendship to quote to you.  It’s like you and me.”

With both hands clasping his arm, her sweet face upturned to his in the dusk, and with the rich notes in her voice that were reminiscent of little Patience, she quoted: 

“’Friendship—­that select and sacred relationship that is a kind of absolute and which even leaves the language of love suspicious and common so much is this purer; and nothing is so much divine.’”

John stopped and taking Lydia’s face in both his hands, he exclaimed huskily.  “Oh, my dear, this is my real welcome home!  Oh, Lydia, Lydia, if you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—­”

Lydia laughed.  “Then we’d travel—­to all the happy places of the world.  We must turn back.  Daddy’ll be waiting.”