Eveline Annersly, faded and frail, was dainty still. As she sat smiling in the waggon, with the sunlight lying warm on her beautiful hands, she was a part of the colour scheme in her soft, grey-tinted draperies. Some women of the cities would have been a blotch on it. She was the figure of tranquil autumn when the wealth of fruits had gone, but her companion with the crimson lips and dusky eyes was spring, when as yet Nature is only stirring and has not awakened to riotous life at the burning kiss of the sun. Eveline Annersly realised this vaguely, and at times felt a thrill of concern, for she knew there was fire beneath that cold exterior. When the awakening should come, much would depend upon whether the sudden untrammelled growth of the girl's nature would cling for warmth and shelter to the man who was her husband. In the meanwhile, she watched the toiling teams coming on across grey grass and golden stubble in echelon. Men sat above the horses' heads on the driving-seats of the big gang-ploughs, and from amidst the curling brown clods came the twinkling flash of steel. The men had brown faces, and some of them bare, brown arms. Sun and wind had burned and beaten them and their garments to the colour of the soil they sprang from. They seemed almost a part of it, as they and the patient beasts did their share in the great, harmonious scheme which in return for the sweat of effort gives man bread to eat. This was not English farming, mixed and variable, but an unlocking of Nature's long-stored wealth in mile-long furrows that should fling the golden wheat by trainload and shipload on the markets of the world. Even Eveline Annersly, who was not greatly interested in agriculture, could realise that. "It is a tremendous farm," she said. "We have nothing like it in England. The length of those furrows appeals to one's imagination. How big is it, Carrie?" The girl smiled a trifle languidly. "I really don't know," she said. "Charley has told me, but I never could remember things like that. He seems rather proud of having broken--I believe that is the right word--most of it out of the prairie. In fact, he is easily content. To break so many acres every year seems his one object in life. I don't think it's anybody's. Presumably, it's a question of temperament. My husband appears to like his occupation, and absorbs himself in it." "Which, of course, is just as you would have it?" The girl made a little half-petulant gesture. "Oh," she said, "I suppose so. I naturally did not expect Charley Leland and I would have many mutual interests when I married him. It would have been in several respects a trifle ridiculous. Still, he is, in his own way, very good to me." "So I should have fancied"; and Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "Did it ever occur to you that he might have expected a good deal from you?"