Clare paused at the door, a long handled spoon in her attenuated grasp; she was an emaciated woman of thirty, with prominent cheek bones, a thin, sensitive nose, and a colorless mouth set in a harsh line by excessive physical suffering. There was about her, in spite of her gaunt features and narrow, stooping frame, something appealingly simple, girlish. A blue ribband made a gay note in her faded, scant hair; she had pinned a piece of draggled color about her throat. "I've been looking for you the half hour," she said querulously; "draw up t' the table." "I stopped at Simmons', and brought you a pretty, too; it's in the bundle." "Gordon!" she exclaimed, as he unwrapped the shoes, "they are elegant! Had you ought to have got them? We need so much--mosquito bar, the flies are terrible wearing, the roof's crying for tin, and--" "You're as bad as Sampson," he interrupted her, almost shortly; "we've got to have pleasures as well as profits. And too," he directed, "don't put those shoes away like you did that watered silk shawl I got you in Stenton. Wear them ... to-night." "Oh, no!" she cried, "not just setting around; they'll get smudged. Not to-night, Gordon; maybe to-morrow, or when I go to church." "Tonight," he repeated inexorably. A bare, stained table with spreading legs pinned through the oak board was ranged against a bench on the kitchen wall, where, in the watery light of a small, glass lamp, Gordon and Clare Makimmon ate their supper of flat, dark, salt-raised bread, strips of bacon and dripping greens, and swimming, purplish preserves. After supper they sat on the narrow porch, facing the dark, whispering stream, the night pouring into the deep, still valley. A cold air rose from the surface of the water, and Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanket about her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delight at her feet, shod in the "real buck." A deep, melancholy chorus of frogs rose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling of crickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills from a thicket of pines. Gordon Makimmon settled into a waking somnolence, lulled by the familiar, profound, withdrawn repose of the valley. He could distinguish Clare's form weaving back and forth in a low rocker; the moonless, summer night embraced, hid, all; there were no lights in the house at his back, no lights visible in the village beyond; only the impenetrable blackness of the opposite range and the abrupt band of stars. Suddenly Clare's even breathing, the tracking sound of the chair, ceased; she drew two or three sharp, gasping inspirations. Gordon, instantly alert, rose and stood over her. "Is it bad to-night again?" he asked solicitously; "shall I get you the ginger water?" "None ... in the house," she articulated laboriously; "pretty ... bad."