Presently they turned off at right angles, upon a country road shaded by century-old maples—­a road that meandered leisurely along, now dipping into a valley created for agriculture, now climbing a hillside rich with fruit trees; and now and then, from hilltop, or through gap in the verdure, the gleam of quiet, rush-fringed lakes came to Ruth—­and touched her, touched her so that her heart was soft and her lashes wet. ...  The whole was so placid, so free from turmoil, from competition, from the tussling of business and the surging upward of down-weighted classes.  She was grateful to it.

Yet when, as she did now and then, she glanced at Bonbright, she felt the contrast.  All that was present in the landscape was absent from his soul.  There was no peace there, no placidity, but unrest, bitterness, unhappiness—­grimness.  Yes, grimness.  When the word came into her mind she knew it was the one she had been searching for. ...  Why was he so grim?

Presently they entered upon a road which ran low beside Apple Lake itself, with tiny ripples lapping almost at the tire marks in the sand.  She looked, and breathed deeply and gladly.  If she could only live on such a spot! ...

The club house was deserted save by the few servants, and Bonbright gave directions that they should be served on the veranda.  It was almost the first word he had littered since leaving the city.  He led the way to a table, from which they could sit and look out on the water.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

“I come here a good deal,” he said, without explanation, but she understood.

“If I were you, I’d live here.  Every day I would have the knowledge that I was coming home to this in the evening. ...  You could.  Why don’t you, I wonder?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t remember a Foote who has ever lived in such a place.  If it hasn’t been done in my family, of course I couldn’t do it.”

She pressed her lips together at the bitter note in his voice.  It was out of tune.  “Have the ancestors been after you?” she asked.  She often spoke of the ancestors lightly and jokingly, which she saw he rather liked.

“The whole lot have been riding me hard.  And I’m a well-trained nag.  I never buck or balk. ...  I never did till to-day.”

“To-day?”

“I bucked them off in a heap,” he said, with no trace of humor.  He was dead serious.  “I didn’t know I could do it, but all of a sudden I was plunging and rearing—­and snorting, I expect. ...  And they were off.”

“To stay?”

He dropped his eyes and fell silent.  “Anyhow,” he said, presently, “it’s a relief to be running free even for an hour.”

“When they go to climb back why don’t you buck some more?  Now that they’re off—­keep them off.”

“It’s not so easy.  You see, I’ve been trained all my life to carry them.  You can’t break off a thing like that in an instant.  A priest doesn’t turn atheist in a night ... and this Family Tradition business is like a religion.  It gets into your bones.  You respect it.  You feel it demanding things of you and you can’t refuse. ...  I suppose there is a duty.”