Had the world been mine to give, how gladly would I have lost it for the right to answer her as she asked; to go with her and to walk by the creek to that deep sea of our childhood where she had caught the turtle; to ride with her again over the mountain road where we had careered so madly on the white mule; to sit with her on the humble back steps and watch the sun sink into the mountains, and listen to the sheep in the meadow, the night-hawk in the sky, the rustle of the wind in the trees--to the valley's lullaby. From this I was held by the vital fact still unrevealed. I folded my arms and looked at the floor, to shut from my eyes the idle vision of the days to which Penelope would lead me, to shut from them Penelope herself sitting very straight, with head high, so that I had fancied the blue bow tossing there. "We'll go in May," she said with a sweep of a small hand, as though our great adventure were settled. "We will go when the orchards are in blossom, David. The valley is loveliest then." To go in May! To go when the hills were clad in the pink and white! To sit with her on the grassy barn-bridge in the evening as we had sat in the old days watching the mountains sink into the night, listening to the last faint echoes of the valley as she turned to restful sleep. Had the universe been mine to give, I would have bartered it for the power to answer her as she asked. Such joys as these I dared not even dream of now, but still I had not the strength to cut myself forever from the last faint hope of them. I looked up into her face aglow with prospect of a return to those simple, kindly days; into her eyes, kindled with that same light that glowed in them in the old time when she would slip her hands so trustingly in mine as we trudged together over the fields. I could say nothing. "Why, David!" she cried, and again a hand was held out to me in appeal. "Don't you want to go with us?" I laughed. And what a struggle I had to force into that laugh a note of happy gayety! I sat on the edge of the divan, very erect, pulling at my fingers, for I was no longer David Malcolm, a dreaming boy; I was a man with a vital fact to meet. Meeting it, I must become to her as any other man she knew--a formal creature, a lay figure for the barber's and tailor's art, with a gift of talking inanities. "It's not because I don't want to go," I said. I was glad that I was in the shadow, for though my voice was steady I felt the blood leave my face. "But you see--there is something I have been wanting to tell you. I'm to be married." "Oh!" she exclaimed.