When Steering found her, she was waiting for him, her arms on an old vine-covered stump, that dusky-gold radiance of hers playing over her and from her, the most beautifully, glowingly alive woman in the world. What he said to her was "How-do-you-do?" But what he wanted to say was, "Oh, stand there so forever, and let every grace, every beauty burn into my brain, so that all my life I may carry you about with me, your wine-warm eyes, your sunlit hair, the whole sweet glow of you,--having you perfectly, knowing you perfectly everywhere, everyhow, near, far, in the sunshine, in the dark!" And when a man wants to talk like that "how-do-you-do" is as good a catchphrase as the next to keep his tongue discreet. "I do very well," she told him, smiling at him, maddening him, "I always do well, here in my garden,--but you, you put my sense of well-being to shame. You look so glad!" "I am the gladdest man on earth," Bruce told her, knowing chiefly that he had her hand in his. He barely remembered in time that she was rich in gold and lands and cattle, and that he was poor, and that the positivism of his personality had already incurred the ill-will of her father. "Still, I don't think there is any doubt in the world how it is all going to end," he said hazily. He still had her hand. She had the hardest hand to put down that he had ever taken up. "I don't quite follow? All what?" She bit her lip; her eyes flashed off across the Di, bright and swift as mating birds, as she drew her hand gently away. "I was only thinking that a man may go on and on through so many meaningless years, of no special significance to himself or to anybody else and then suddenly,--think everything is going to be all right some day." He clasped his hands and leaned on the other side of the vine-covered stump and looked at her wishfully, and she laughed at him, with her eyes still on the pale river. "How do you like my garden?" she asked divertingly. For answer he shut his eyes and breathed deeply. "Oh, how good!" she cried, satisfied, "that's the only way really to follow the path of fragrance,--that's my own way!" He blessed his stars that he had sniffed at the roses. "Where did the path lead you?" she queried, as he opened his eyes dreamily upon her golden beauty. "Into heaven," he murmured with sublime conviction, and she clasped her slender hands, delighted at their mystical congeniality. "I am so glad that we like the same thing," she continued, hurrying a little; "haven't you noticed?--we both like the garden,--and we both like Piney. When did you see Piney?" "Piney? Oh, I see Piney often." He rather wished that she had not mentioned Piney. Since he had come to know the tramp-boy better his first ache for him had become sharper and sharper. "Piney and I were out on the hills together only yesterday. Poor Piney!"