curve of its flank swam beneath the rider. Horse and rider disappeared behind a bend in the path.
The two young women walked on together. When they reached the point where Alayne must turn into the narrow footpath leading to Fiddler's Hut, Minny Ware said: "Shall I come one day, then, and sing?"
"Yes, do," answered Alayne. After all, Eden might like her singing. He hadn't much to amuse him, shut in among the trees. He must get tired of reading and being read to.
She found him sitting on the ground beneath a cedar-tree that rose, a pointed spire, behind him. She asked, anxiously: "Do you think you should sit on the ground? I'm afraid it's quite damp."
He pushed back his hair petulantly. "I was so beastly hot. There seemed to be more air down here."
"Sometimes I wonder," she said, looking at him with a pucker on her forehead, "if you should have come here at all. It might have been better if you had gone to the mountains or one of your Northern lakes. Even now, if you would like to go, I would go with you."
"No." He turned his head away sulkily. "I'm here, and here I'll stay. If I get better, well and good. If I don't—it doesn't much matter." He stretched out his hand, plucked a wood lily, and tore off its petals one by one.
"That's nonsense," said Alayne, sharply. "It matters a great deal. Have I come all this way for something that does not matter?"
"It does not matter to you."
"Yes, it does."
"You don't love me."
She did not answer.
"Do you love me?" he insisted, childishly.
"No."
"Then in what way do I matter to you? For God's sake, don't say my writing matters to you!"
"But it does! And you do—for yourself. Can't you understand how my feeling for you may have changed into something quite different from love—yet something
