There was nothing dreary or poverty-stricken about the old farm-house now.  From its front, where every shutter, by day, shone in the healthy trim of fresh paint, to the gate upon the road went rows of flowers, nodding their bright heads above the waving grass.  The barns at the back stood substantial and in repair, and now out beyond the road, Lake Forsaken mirrored the stars and broke in light when a fish leaped under the moon.

Mary Burton and her lover walked down to the gate, and he said simply: 

“Now, dear, there is nothing more to hold you here.  If you still long to see beyond the sky-line, I can take you wherever you want to go.”

But she wheeled and laid a hand in protest on his arm.

“No!” she exclaimed tensely.  “No, this is where I belong.”  After a moment she went on.  “Life holds enough for me here.  This is home to me.  I don’t want anything else.”

“I am glad.  It’s what I hoped to hear you say,” he responded.  “I don’t think somehow I could be as happy anywhere else, but the world’s a big place and you—­you have the right to the best it holds—­anywhere.”

“Once, dear, you know,” she told him gravely, “we threshed that out and we had almost made up our minds to leave here.  We were almost whipped—­and Ham had his dreams.  He wanted to go out and try life in a bigger world—­and you recognized his power.  I wanted it all, too—­but we stayed.  I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t, but I do know—­” she looked up into his face and smiled; into her eyes came a regal serenity—­“I do know that I don’t have to go out and hunt for life—­life has come to me, and I’m happy.”

The man caught her to him and she clasped her hands behind his head.  Before them was June and starlight and youth and life—­and love.  He bent his head and pressed his lips to hers and felt her heart beat against his own.

In the mirror of Lake Forsaken, back of her, gleamed the splintered light of a thousand stars, and in his heart gleamed a million.

“As beautiful as starlight on water,” he whispered.