When he returned to their outdoor inn the late afternoon glow lay along the rich fields that sloped down from their well-concealed nook.  Istra was still asleep, but her cheek now lay wistfully on the crook of her thin arm.  He looked at the auburn-framed paleness of her face, its lines of thought and ambition, unmasked, unprotected by the swift changes of expression which defended her while she was awake.  He sobbed.  If he could only make her happy!  But he was afraid of her moods.

He built a fire by a brooklet beyond the willows, boiled the eggs and toasted the bread and made the tea, with cream ready in a jar.  He remembered boyhood camping days in Parthenon and old camp lore.  He returned to the stack and called, “Istra—­oh, Is-tra!”

She shook her head, nestled closer into the straw, then sat up, her hair about her shoulders.  She smiled and called down:  “Good morning.  Why, it’s afternoon!  Did you sleep well, dear?”

“Yes.  Did you?  Gee, I hope you did!”

“Never better in my life.  I’m so sleepy yet.  But comfy.  I needed a quiet sleep outdoors, and it’s so peaceful here.  Breakfast!  I roar for breakfast!  Where’s the nearest house?”

“Got breakfast all ready.”

“You’re a dear!”

She went to wash in the brook, and came back with eyes dancing and hair trim, and they laughed over breakfast, glancing down the slope of golden hazy fields.  Only once did Istra pass out of the land of their intimacy into some hinterland of analysis—­when she looked at him as he drank his tea aloud out of the stew-pan, and wondered:  “Is this really you here with me?  But you aren’t a boulevardier.  I must say I don’t understand what you’re doing here at all....  Nor a caveman, either.  I don’t understand it....  But you sha’n’t be worried by bad Istra.  Let’s see; we went to grammar-school together.”

“Yes, and we were in college.  Don’t you remember when I was baseball captain?  You don’t?  Gee, you got a bad memory!”

At which she smiled properly, and they were away for Suffolk again.

“I suppose now it’ll go and rain,” said Istra, viciously, at dusk.  It was the first time she had spoken for a mile.  Then, after another quarter-mile:  “Please don’t mind my being silent.  I’m sort of stiff, and my feet hurt most unromantically.  You won’t mind, will you?”

Of course he did mind, and of course he said he didn’t.  He artfully skirted the field of conversation by very West Sixteenth Street observations on a town through which they passed, while she merely smiled wearily, and at best remarked “Yes, that’s so,” whether it was so or not.

He was reflecting:  “Istra’s terrible tired.  I ought to take care of her.”  He stopped at the wood-pillared entrance of a temperance inn and commanded:  “Come!  We’ll have something to eat here.”  To the astonishment of both of them, she meekly obeyed with “If you wish.”