She let him help her up, her hand in his, her lowered eyelids his to read. He could find nothing there, except that they were darker-tinged than usual--and her lips grave. He decided that she was frightened. "It was a shame for me, to bring you all this way," he said, with the gentleness which he usually had at command. "I wanted so much really to talk to you, and I couldn't think of a better place." "I wanted to come," Ann returned. "I wanted to see the Mine Banks again--" "And to see me, too, Ann?" "Yes." She gave him a half-questioning, half-appealing glance. "I wanted to talk to you, too." The laughter that usually danced in her eyes was not there. Garvin was still certain that she was frightened, at her own temerity, and doubtful of him. "Well, we can talk all we want to here, dear. No one will disturb us, and you are safe with me.... See, isn't this perfect?" They had come to the ledge. Ann looked into the umbrella-like cave with the yawning hole at the back, the burrow of some animal; then at the screen of pines. The place was shut in, warm and restful. "It's lovely," she said softly, "an' I'm not afraid of it now. I came up here once, when I was little, an' something moved in the hole, an' I was scared. I ran, and I never did come back--I imagined it was a lion.... That's why it was fun to come to the Banks--I could have such fearful imaginings--imaginings are fun." She was more like herself now, laughing softly and coquetting with the hole in the cave. "It's nothing but a fox-hole, Ann. I used to let them have it in the winter and then trap them. When I got to coming here often, I didn't like the smell of them about, and I have made it too hot for them. I let the rabbits have it now--I don't mind their scuttling about while I lie here." "You talk as if you lived here. It is a peaceful, far-away place to live." She was looking through the tunnel and had lost her smile. Garvin had a sudden remembrance of some of the scenes the place had harbored, and he turned away from it, impatiently. "Let's sit under the pines, where we can look out," he suggested. He took her cape and spread it close to one of the trees. "How do you like that?" Ann had not heard him. She was looking steadily at the roof of the Penniman house. She turned sharply, turned her back on it, sat so she could lean against the tree-trunk. "Why do you sit that way?" Garvin asked in surprise. "Don't you want to look out?" "No, I like this way best."