There in the fog on the Plank Road we met as if there had come a clearness everywhere--we two, between whom lay that year since my coming to Friendship. Only, now that he was with me, I observed that the traitor year had slipped away as if it had never been, and had left us two alone in a place so sightly that at last I recognized my own happiness. And I understood--and this way of understanding leaves one a breathless being--that his happiness was there too. And yet it was only: "You.... But what an adventure to meet you here!" And from him: "Me. Here. Please, may we go to your house? I haven't had an _indication_ of breakfast." At which we laughed somewhat, with my, "How absurdly like you not to have had breakfast," and his, "How very shabby of you to feel superior because you happen to have had your coffee." So we moved back down the road with the clear little space in the fog following, following.... A kind of passion for detail seized on us both. He said: "You're wearing brown. I've never seen you wear brown--I'm sure I haven't. Have I?" "My fur coat was brown," I escaped into the subject, "but then that hardly counts." "No," he agreed, "fur isn't a colour. Fur is just fur. No, I've never seen you in brown." "How did they let you off at the draw? How did you know about getting off at the draw?" I demanded. "You said something of your getting off there--in that one letter, you know...." "Yes, yes...." "You said something about getting off there on a night when you left the train with a girl who was coming home to the village--you know the letter?" he broke off, "I think it was that letter that finally gave me courage to come. Because in that I saw in you something new and--understanding. Well, and I remembered about the draw. I always meant to get off there, when I came." "You always meant ... but then how did you make them stop?" "I told the man I had to, and then he had to, too. There were four others who got off and went across the tracks, but we are not obliged to consider them." "From that," I said, "I would think it _is_ you, if I didn't know it couldn't possibly be!" Then I hurried into some recital about the Topladys, whose big barn and little house were lined faintly out as if something were making them feel hushed; and about Friendship, hidden in the valley as if it were suddenly of lesser import--how strange that these things should be there as they were an hour ago. And so we came to Oldmoxon House and went up the walk in silence save that, at the steps, "How long shall I tell them to boil your eggs?" I asked desperately, to still the quite ridiculous singing of the known world. But then the singing took one voice, a voice whose firmness made it almost hard, save that deep within it something was beating.... "You know," said the voice simply, "if I come in now, I come to stay. You _do_ know?" "You come to breakfast...." I tried it. "I come to stay." "You mean--" "I come to stay."