Curiously Carley watched him, and did not allow her mind to become concerned with a somewhat painful swell of her heart.  What a stride he had!  How vigorous he looked, and earnest!  He was as intent upon this job as if he had been a rustic.  He might have been failing to do it well, but he most certainly was doing it conscientiously.  Once he had said to her that a man should never be judged by the result of his labors, but by the nature of his effort.  A man might strive with all his heart and strength, yet fail.  Carley watched him striding along and bending down, absorbed in his task, unmindful of the glaring hot sun, and somehow to her singularly detached from the life wherein he had once moved and to which she yearned to take him back.  Suddenly an unaccountable flashing query assailed her conscience:  How dare she want to take him back?  She seemed as shocked as if some stranger had accosted her.  What was this dimming of her eye, this inward tremulousness; this dammed tide beating at an unknown and riveted gate of her intelligence?  She felt more then than she dared to face.  She struggled against something in herself.  The old habit of mind instinctively resisted the new, the strange.  But she did not come off wholly victorious.  The Carley Burch whom she recognized as of old, passionately hated this life and work of Glenn Kilbourne’s, but the rebel self, an unaccountable and defiant Carley, loved him all the better for them.

Carley drew a long deep breath before she called Glenn.  This meeting would be momentous and she felt no absolute surety of herself.

Manifestly he was surprised to hear her call, and, dropping his sack and implement, he hurried across the tilled ground, sending up puffs of dust.  He vaulted the rude fence of poles, and upon sight of her called out lustily.  How big and virile he looked!  Yet he was gaunt and strained.  It struck Carley that he had not looked so upon her arrival at Oak Creek.  Had she worried him?  The query gave her a pang.

“Sir Tiller of the Fields,” said Carley, gayly, “see, your dinner!  I brought it and I am going to share it.”

“You old darling!” he replied, and gave her an embrace that left her cheek moist with the sweat of his.  He smelled of dust and earth and his body was hot.  “I wish to God it could be true for always!”

His loving, bearish onslaught and his words quite silenced Carley.  How at critical moments he always said the thing that hurt her or inhibited her!  She essayed a smile as she drew back from him.

“It’s sure good of you,” he said, taking the basket.  “I was thinking I’d be through work sooner today, and was sorry I had not made a date with you.  Come, we’ll find a place to sit.”

Whereupon he led her back under the trees to a half-sunny, half-shady bench of rock overhanging the stream.  Great pines overshadowed a still, eddying pool.  A number of brown butterflies hovered over the water, and small trout floated like spotted feathers just under the surface.  Drowsy summer enfolded the sylvan scene.