“You don’t mean at daylight to-morrow, do you, Pan, dear?” I asked, with one of the last laughs that my heart was to know, for sometimes, it seemed forever, rippling out past his crimson crests.

“No; listen to me, Woman,” said Adam, as he held me tenderly on his right arm and took both my hands in his and held them pressed hard against my breast.  “I am going away to-night, and I don’t know when I can get back.  I only knew to-day I’d have to go; that’s why I—­I took you and put my brand on your heart to-night.  I can leave you aloose in the forest and know that I’ll find you mine when I can come back.  But, oh, come with me!”

“I wouldn’t be your earth woman, Adam, if I left all these helpless things.  I’ll wait for you, and no matter when you come I’ll be ready.  Only, only you’ll never take me quite away from them all, will you?”

“No; I’ll build a nest over there in the big woods, and you can go back and forth between my—­my brood and Mr. G. Bird’s,” promised Adam with Pan’s fluty laugh.

“Branded, and I don’t even know the initials on the brand,” I said to myself as I stood on the front steps under a honeysuckle vine that was twining with a musky rose in a death struggle as to the strength of their perfumes, and watched Adam go padding swiftly and silently away from me down the long avenue of elms.  A mocking-bird in a tree over by the fence was pouring out showers of notes of liquid love, and ringdoves cooed and softly nestled up under the eaves above my head.  “I’m a woman and I’ve found my mate.  I am going to be part of it all,” I said to myself as I sank to the step and began to brood with the night around me.

I think that God gives it sometimes to a woman to have a night in which she sits alone brooding her love until somehow it waxes so strong and brave that it can face death by starvation and cold and betrayal and still live triumphant.  It is so that He recreates His children.

“Now, of course, Ann, everybody admires your pluck about this retiring from the world and becoming a model rustic, but it does seem to me that you might admit that some of your old friends have at least a part of the attraction for you that is vested in, well, say old Mrs. Red Ally, for instance.  Will you or will you not come in to dine and to wine and to dance at the country club with Matthew Saturday evening?” Bess delivered herself of the text of her mission to me before she descended from her cherry roadster in front of the barn.

“Oh, Bess, just come and see old Mrs. Red and never, never ask me to feel about a mere friend of my childhood like I do about her,” I answered with welcome and excitement both in my voice.  “Do come quick and look!”

“Coming,” answered Bess, with delightful enthusiasm and no wounded pride, as she left the car in one motion and swept into the barn with me in about two more.