“I hope you don’t think I’m too young to marry,” Claude said as they tramped on.
“No, it’s right and proper a young man should marry. I don’t say anything against marriage,” Mr. Royce protested doggedly. “You may find some opposition in Enid’s missionary motives. I don’t know how she feels about that now. I don’t enquire. I’d be pleased to see her get rid of such notions. They don’t do a woman any good.”
“I want to help her get rid of them. If it’s all right with you, I hope I can persuade Enid to marry me this fall.”
Jason Royce turned his head quickly toward his companion, studied his artless, hopeful countenance for a moment, and then looked away with a frown.
The alfalfa field sloped upward at one corner, lay like a bright green-and-purple handkerchief thrown down on the hillside. At the uppermost angle grew a slender young cottonwood, with leaves as light and agitated as the swarms of little butterflies that hovered above the clover. Mr. Royce made for this tree, took off his black coat, rolled it up, and sat down on it in the flickering shade. His shirt showed big blotches of moisture, and the sweat was rolling in clear drops along the creases in his brown neck. He sat with his hands clasped over his knees, his heels braced in the soft soil, and looked blankly off across the field. He found himself absolutely unable to touch upon the vast body of experience he wished to communicate to Claude. It lay in his chest like a physical misery, and the desire to speak struggled there. But he had no words, no way to make himself understood. He had no argument to present. What he wanted to do was to hold up life as he had found it, like a picture, to his young friend; to warn him, without explanation, against certain heart-break-
