"Lydia, you must! You can't have a friend and not share his problems and you can't live in a community and not share its problems, if you're going to be worth anything to the world." "But if the problems really meant anything to you," protested Lydia, "you wouldn't depend on some girl to shove you into them." "But men do. They are built that way. Not _some_ girl but _the girl_. Every great cause was fought for some woman! Oh, Lydia, Lydia!" "Billy," Lydia looked away from him to the lake, "you'll have to let me think about it. You see, it's deciding my attitude toward all my friends, even toward Dad. And I hadn't intended ever to decide." "And will you tell me, to-morrow, or next day, Lydia?" "I'll tell you as soon as I decide," she answered. Amos brought John Levine home with him for supper. It seemed to Lydia that Levine never had been dearer to her than he was that evening. After supper, they drew up around the base burner in the old way, while the two men smoked. Lizzie sat rocking and rubbing her rheumatism-racked old hands and Adam, who snored worse as he grew old, wheezed with his head baking under the stove. Levine did not talk of the Indians, to Lydia's relief, but of Washington politics. As the evening drew to a close, and Amos went out to his chickens as usual after Lizzie had gone to bed, John turned to Lydia. "What are you reading, these days, young Lydia?" "Browning--'The Ring and the Book,'" replied Lydia. John shook his head. "Really grown up, aren't you, Lydia? Do you enjoy being a young lady?" "Yes, I do, only I miss the old days when I saw so much of you." "Do you, my dear?" asked Levine, eagerly. "In what ways do you miss me?" "Oh, every way! No one will ever understand me as you do." "Oh, I don't know. There are Billy and Kent." Lydia shook her head, though Billy's face in the moonlight after the graduation party, returned unexpectedly to her memory as she did so. "There'll never be any one like you." Then moved by a sudden impulse she leaned toward him and said, "No matter what happens, you will always know that I love you, won't you, Mr. Levine?" John looked at the wistful face, keenly. "Why, what could happen, young Lydia?" "Oh, lots of things! I'm grown up now and--and I have to make decisions about the rightness and the wrongness of things. But no matter what I decide, _nothing_ can change my love for you." "Lydia, come here," said Levine, abruptly. In the old way, Lydia came to his side and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair. For a moment they sat in silence, his arm about her, her cheek against his hair, staring into the glowing stove.