"Well, that was one of my day dreams--at twenty-six," I said, wondering what his was, still unexpressed, at "forty-six". "The truth is, I wanted to break with every association in New York and with my past life-- "Why, Miss Farrell? You are so young to say that; at your age you should have no past." I hesitated to answer. Thoughts followed one another with rapidity: "Shall I tell him? Lay before him what threatened to embitter my whole life? Shall I make known to him the weight of the burden that rested for so many years on my young shoulders--even before I went down into that great city to earn my livelihood? Shall I tell him that? How can he understand, not having had such experience? What, after all, is that to him, now? "Young?" I repeated, looking away from him westwards into the illumined perspective of forest greens. "When you were young, very young in years, was there never a time when you felt old, as if youth had never passed your way?" I heard a sudden, sharp-drawn breath. I turned to him on the instant, and in the quivering nostril, the frowning brows, the hard lines about the well-controlled lips, I read the confirmation of my intuition, expressed to Jamie so many months ago, that he had suffered. My question had probed, unintentionally, to the quick. With a woman's sympathetic insight, I saw that this man had never recovered from his past, never broken with it as, so recently, I had broken with mine. I felt that until he should make the effort, should gain that point of view, he could never feel free to love me as I loved him. The barrier of that past was between us. What it was I hardly cared to know. I was intent only upon helping him to free himself from the serfdom of memories. "Don't answer me--I don't want any," I said hastily, leaning over to lay my hand on the pommel of his saddle. It was the only demonstration I dared to make to express my understanding, my sympathy. In an instant his right hand closed hard upon mine; held it, hard pressed, on the pommel. "I think I want to answer you," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately, without the slightest trace of excitement in his passionless voice. He was looking into the woods--not at me--as he spoke, and I knew that at that moment his soul was wandering afar from mine; it was with some one in the past. Suddenly, a hot, unreasonable wave of jealousy overwhelmed me; I yielded to the impulse to pull my hand from under his. "It is not my hand he is clasping, and pressing with the strength of a press-block on the pommel; it's that other woman's!" I said to myself, making a second determined effort to release my hand. He whirled about in his saddle, looking me directly in the eyes. He read my thought of him. "Let your hand lie there, quietly, under mine," he said sternly; "it's _your_ hand, remember, not another's."