"I've told you--I'll take anything, so you come with it." The dusk had gathered rapidly; close as they were to each other, their faces had grown indistinct. Ann's answer was groping hands lifted to him, a pressure of slim fingers on his neck. But when he tried to kiss her she bent her head, smothering his caresses with her hair. "I must say 'yes' my own way," she objected. "Well--say it your way," Baird whispered, husky from emotion. She lifted her face and brushed his cheek with her lashes. "A butterfly's kiss," she said with soft gaiety. "You've pretty ways--dangerous ways--" Baird said chokingly. "I'll love you too much--that'll be the trouble." He strove for control. "Ann--do you remember what you said to the stars, the night I didn't know my own heart--when you told me what love was?" "Yes, I remember." "Repeat it, won't you--I want to hear you say it." Ann's slurred syllables again made music of it: "Love is wantin' somebody for all your own--so badly you feel sure you can't live without them ... an' at the same time bein' such good friends with them that you care more about makin' them happy than being happy yourself." "There's a bit of the Golden Rule in that," Baird said. "That's what makes it difficult. Do you think we can live up to it, Ann?" Ann answered him to the best of her ability.... Years later she answered the same question with a better understanding. CONCLUSION Is it permissible to steal a fragment from later history in order to elucidate what has gone before? It is a responsibility the fictional historian must sometimes take. Judith and Ann and Baird are of the present. Life has woven them into subsequent history, drawing from a skein as tangled as was the skein of thirteen years ago. The fragment I pilfer is the conclusion of a letter from Judith to Ann, penned in our day, and part of another story: "I have written you a few facts, Ann. I have one more thing to tell you, something that reaches back beyond these years of mutual antagonism.... The day after Nickolas Baird married you, Coats Penniman came to see me, and told me the following: that Sue had found certain letters of Garvin's to you which gave him the erroneous impression that Garvin had wronged you. Then he went, hot from reading them, to the Mine Banks, thinking he would find you with Garvin. That he met Garvin at the first ore-pit and accused him, and that Garvin denied it. That he gave Garvin the lie and they drew their pistols, that they fired, and that Garvin wounded him in the shoulder, disabling his pistol arm. That Garvin had leveled to fire again, when, suddenly, Edward appeared and tried to hold Garvin back, and that Garvin's pistol went off. Coats thought the shot had gone wild until he saw Edward drop. He said that Garvin laughed wildly then and ran back into the Banks.