"Oh, yes, I dare say. Only they don't stare after us and say, 'Why do they do thus and so?' They don't even speak of your beautiful hair. I talk about that myself, all the time, and you like to have me. But we should both think it mighty queer if anybody else did." "Do we speak to the other people?" "Sometimes. If we want to. If you see a diamond or a sapphire, or I see a new patent weeder, then we say, 'We want to buy that.' But we don't have much time for other folks. We travel a lot. You tell me about pictures and Alps and thrones and principalities, because I don't know much except about grafting trees and sowing seed at the best time. But always we come home here to the plantation because I find that's where I feel most at peace. And you are at peace here, too. I am delighted when I find that out." "Be delighted now, then. I am at peace here, more than anywhere else." "And when we are here, we live in our house. At first, I built a large one up there on the hill, and I had you bring over pictures for it from abroad, and I planted trees, and it was very grand. But I wasn't contented there, and you weren't, because of it. You saw at once that my shell had got to fit me, and the plain house did. So I kicked over the big house, and we lived in the old one." "With grannie?" "Yes, only I didn't think very much about her. She was always there, I suppose, like the sun through the windows, very kind and warm, and glad we were contented; but it was our house. That's what makes the charm of everything--that it's yours and mine. I couldn't sleep in the house though. It had to be outdoors." "Did I have my hammock swung in the upper veranda?" He laughed out delightedly. "How did you know? Yes, I slept down here or under the fir by the house, but you were afraid of caterpillars and you had to be up there." "I'm not afraid of anything else," she explained humbly. "Not of bears or anything in the deep woods. But caterpillars crawl so!" "However, it didn't make any difference where you were, because while we were asleep it was just as it is while we are awake--there is a fine thread that goes from me to you. There might be processions of people between us, chariots and horses and marching armies, but they couldn't break the thread." "And what do we do all day?" "Talk. Think. I think to you and you think back to me." "But we must work. If we don't, you'll get tired of me." She spoke out of sad knowledge. "Why, playmate!" The reproach in his voice recalled her, and she was ashamed to find her belief less warm than his. "Well," he conceded, "maybe we work. I go on grafting and sowing seeds and sending things to market, and you sit on a stone and sing." "Shall I sing to you now?" "No, playmate. It makes me sad." "I could sing happy songs." "That wouldn't make any difference. When you sing, it wakens something in me, some discontent, some longing bigger than I am, and that's not pleasure. It is pain." "Are you afraid of pain?"