At the top of Loman Hill, at the crossroads, is a beech tree, on which lovers have carved their initials for generations. It stands beside a low hedge in which is set a rickety five-barred gate. It was at that gate that they must have stood, as everyone stands, gazing at the blue haze that lies over the hills beyond and at the square, red sandstone tower of Cross Loman church below them. I have stood at the crossroads on Loman Hill many and many a time and looked over the five-barred gate, at the tower of St. Andrew’s, and when I went there last, I thought of those two who must have stood there together--Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch. She was a tall woman, and her shoulders and his were nearly on a level; and his red head topped hers only by a matter of a quarter of an inch. I never saw Bill Patch wear a cap or a hat. Her clothes were rather distinctive, and she wore them well. She had a figure for tailor-made suits, and they were nearly always dark in color, and she wore with them a white silk shirt, open at the throat. Her hats were always severe--dark velours, of the plainest possible contour. Mary says that she knew her style, and stuck to it. It was characteristic of her to keep her hands thrust into her coat pockets, and I always fancy that it was so that she leaned against the rickety gate, her shoulders as erect as Bill’s were slouched. He was so short-sighted that he never took off his glasses, and through those queer, thick lenses he must have looked at her, as he listened. His eyes always had that friendly smile in them, and that odd, pathetic look that had reminded me of a Clumber spaniel. It was his mouth that betrayed him, with the sensitive line of lip that was visible only when he was not laughing. _That_ gave one Bill Patch, the writer and dreamer--Sallie’s potential romantic. They stood at the crossways for a very long while, and, after a time, in silence. Bill Patch knew, absolutely for certain, that he loved her, and that they belonged to one another. The supreme importance of it, in his eyes, made everything else of so little account that he did not even wonder what would happen. Mrs. Harter was different. She had never waited as Bill, quite unconsciously, had waited. The thing had come upon her unawares, and part of her--the part that had made her marry Harter, and then flirt with other men--had absolutely denied the existence of the one supreme reality. But the capacity for recognizing it had been there all the time, smothered under her cheap cynicism, her ruthless ambition, and the streak in her of sheer, iron hardness. She had to recognize it, when it came, and to surrender to it. And so she was frightened, or at least overwhelmed, at first. Bill’s intuition told him that, and he gave her time.