Since that day in this very place, Edgerton had spoken no more of love to her. She knew that he never would again, that what had begun here on the Path to Yesterday had ended where the path ended. Never again would he retrace those steps with her; never again travel them alone. For it was a lost road to him, a blind trail already overgrown with briars. The days made it fainter, the months were hiding it, the years would obliterate it for him. But for her, alas—she had many a pilgrimage yet to make along that briar-grown path; and many a scar, yet unmade, must heal before that path closed before her pilgrim feet, and shut out forever from her eyes the hidden shrine it led to, where the sky was rosy above the river and the starlings called through the golden light of Paradise. And now, as she stood up, the subtle scent of autumn hung heavy in the air—a faint odor of ripening, hinting of decay and death. Summer had gone indeed—on earth and in her heart. Never again would life be the same to her after this day, in this place, alone with memory; never again would she be the same. How old her heart had become—how old—how old! O amari dies! O flebiles noctes! She rode that afternoon with Colonel Curmew, accepting him instead of another because she thought his chatter might leave her freer to follow her own thoughts. But after a while it seemed to her as though she could no longer endure them, and that the colonel’s inanities were preferable. They were riding down a mountain road, the horses picking a cautious way among the scattered stones. He was paying court to her, as usual, and she had been riding on, smiling absently, preoccupied with her own thoughts and mentally oblivious to him, when there came a clatter of stones from behind, and Scott Wallace galloped recklessly up at the risk of his horse’s neck as well as his own. "Halloo!" he said cheerfully; "hope I’m not smashing a twosome, colonel." The colonel glanced sourly at him. Diana laughed with pleasure: "Not at all, Scott! Colonel Curmew and I are old acquaintances, and the resources of sentiment were long ago exhausted between us. Where are you going?" "Nowhere; I just felt like a gallop. All the chaps are kickin’ over the flight, which either isn’t goin’ to materialize or passed over Sunday and made boobs of the bunch of us. Where are _you_ goin’?" "Nowhere in particular; come with us. My nerves needed soothing, so I took the colonel along." "As a tonic or quieter?" asked Wallace so seriously that Diana threw back her pretty head and the woodlands were melodious. The colonel laughed loudly, too, and began to hate young Wallace with a hatred that passes all understanding. Wallace turned to her. "What’s wrong with _your_ nerves? I supposed you hadn’t any." "I didn’t know it either, Scott. Probably I’ve played with cards and cigarettes too hard. For all the sunshine, to-day has been a gray one for me.... Shall we gallop?"