“Well,” she said, with slow emphasis, “if that’s what you mean, I’ll tell you this. I will never do such a thing.” She was on her feet in an instant, her tall body like a statue of rebuke crushing him in its shadow. “Come,” she said coldly. “Yes,” he replied. “I’m sorry, I’m awfully sorry, Ellen.” At that moment, as they started homeward from Florissant’s field with the darkness between them, her swishing, angry stride filling him with a new knowledge of mystery and awe, there was no doubt that they both meant what they said. But in Ellen a certain helplessness and fear were born. Struggle as she might from now on his very presence would be a menace, and his presence was more than ever a necessity. For the cry that he was uttering was one that her own heart understood. * * * * * So it happened that a few months later when the Osprey family were at a country hotel for the summer, he and Ellen met in the empty house and walked hand in hand through the rooms--her sworn promise whirling in his brain. She was stiff and awkward, but he was in high spirits, perhaps a little hysterical, fondly imagining he was entering upon a new paradise of experience.... III Emmet Roget, twenty, and Potter Osprey, nineteen, both juniors at the University, were sitting naked one afternoon on the long parapet which formed one of the banks of Milton’s abandoned quarry. Behind them the stone wall fell away a sheer twenty feet to the gulch below. In front, licking the tops of the three-foot barrier, lay the broad sheet of deep, clear water. Their white bodies dripped opaline flakes in the sunset. From time to time they shivered in the chilly late September wind. A pale, luminous dory of a moon floated low in the delicately blue and pink expanse of sky that lay over the town. The surrounding flat country was infinitely still, infinitely peaceful. Potter suddenly droned forth in the melancholy baritone the two affected when reading Swinburne and other modern poets: “The wandering moon, an optimistic sprite Etched a pale border ’round the face of night....” Emmet was silent for a moment, and then as though the sound of the quotation had travelled to him from a distance, burst out: “Gosh, man, where did you get that?” The other reached over boisterously and clapped his friend’s shoulder. “A trial of my own! All you need to be a poet is to suffer from insomnia, the way I did the other night.” “Well, you can write.” “Eh? But I’d so much rather paint.” “Better look out. You may have more talent for writing than for painting.” Potter sensed a criticism in the remark, which he privately resented. “No, the thing I’ll never be able to do is the thing I’m going to do.” Emmet did not reply at once, and his sleepy blue eyes, long and narrow between the lids, rested upon an indefinable point of distance. The wind ruffled his dark curly hair that grew low on the brow and temples. He was the handsomer of the two.