Mary had changed her seat, with a murmured excuse about a draft on her back. She had usually sat between Jacob Bailey and Flora May, sat there with an inward protest. She shrank from contact with the imbecile girl: the instinctive shrinking of the healthy from the sick, the unconscious cruelty of the normal toward the abnormal. Hitherto she had given no sign of this, ashamed of an instinct that was yet too strong for her; conscious, too, under the skin of her mind, of the warmth of compassion, the tenderness of courtesy, with which Pippin always treated the poor girl. If she had been the First Lady of the Land, he could have shown her no more attention, Mary thought. But to-night there was something more; Mary was afraid. The look she had met, out there by the barn, the dreadful look which seemed to strike like a sword at her springing hope and lay it cold and dead--she shuddered now at thought of it; she would not meet it again. If she had turned her eyes toward Flora May, she would have seen the beautiful face sombre but quiet, the eyes cast down, the girl's whole air listless and brooding; only--if she had looked longer--she might have seen now and then the heavy white lids tremble, lift a little way, and a glance dart from under the long lashes toward Pippin where he sat opposite her. Mary dared not look at Pippin either, for she felt his eyes upon her. Not yet, not before all these people, could she give him back look for look, tell him silently all that was crying out within her; but soon, soon, Pippin! Meantime she had drawn the child Peppino into the seat next her, and was lavishing on him all the innocent wiles of the child-hungry woman; and the child nestled close to her, and looked up at her with adoring eyes. Pippin would see, would understand. All would be well. Pippin saw, but did not understand. He had wrestled and overcome, but the stress of conflict was still upon him, the air was still full of the clash of arms, the sound of great wings. His shadow world was gone, swept away into nothingness; and of the actual flesh-and-blood realities he saw nothing except Mary Blossom. There she sat opposite him, in all her loveliness; surely he might look at her now, might for once take his fill of gazing on the lovely head with its clustering hair ("The color of a yearlin' heifer--Poor old mutt! What a way to speak of it! Wouldn't that give you a pain?"), on the long dark lashes against the exquisite curve of the rose-white cheek, on the perfect mouth-- Pippin's eyes grew misty; the world fell away from him--say, rather, it narrowed to a point, and life and death and every other creature were merged in that fair head of the love he thought he had lost. "Flora May!" Mrs. Bailey spoke abruptly, almost sharply; every one started. "Wake up, Flora, and set up straight; you're all slid down in your chair. Here! Take this cup o' tea to Miss Blossom, dear!"