I looked away across the Pump pasture where the railway tracks cut the Plank Road, that comes on and on until it is modified into Daphne Street. I remembered a morning of mist and dogwood when I had walked that road through the gateway into an earthly paradise. Have I not said that since that time we two have been, as it were, set to music and sung; so that the silences of separation are difficult to beguile save by the companionship of the village--the village that has somehow taught Miggy its bourgeoise lesson of doubt? My silence laid on her some vague burden of proof. "Besides," she said, "I'm not like the women who marry people. Most of 'em that's married ain't all married, anyway." "What do you mean, child?" I demanded. "They're not," protested Miggy. "They marry like they pick out a way to have a dress made when they don't admire any of the styles very much, and they've wore out everything else. Women like some things about somebody, and that much they marry. Then the rest of him never is married at all, and by and by that rest starts to get lonesome." "But Miggy," I said to all this, "I should think you might like Peter entirely." She surprised me by her seriousness. "Anyhow, I've got my little sister to bring up," she said; "Aunt Effie hasn't anything. And I couldn't put two on him to support." I wondered why not, but I said nothing. "And besides," Miggy said after a pause, "there's Peter's father. You know about him?" I did know--who in the village did not know? Since my neighbour had told me of him I had myself seen him singing through the village streets, shouting out and disturbing the serene evenings, drunken, piteous.... "Peter has him all the time," I suggested. She must have found a hint of resistance in my voice, for her look questioned me. "I never could stand it to have anybody like that in the house," she said defensively. "I've told Peter. I've told him both reasons...." Miggy threw out her arms and stood still, facing the sunset. "Anyway, I want to keep on feeling all free and liberty-like!" she said. This intense individualism of youth, passioning only for far spaces, taking no account of the common lot nor as yet urgent to share it is, like the panther grace in the tread of the cat, a survival of the ancient immunity from accountabilities. To note it is to range down the evolution of ages. To tame it--there is a task for all the servants of the new order.