He turned hastily to the old lady with an apology. "Why, I _beg_ your pardon! I didn't realize I had gone on talking aloud. I was just thinking along to myself. You see, your soothing syrup is working on me, the garden, the sun, the stillness, all the grandmothers and grandfathers sitting around. I am almost half asleep." "I'm an old maid, I know," said Cousin Hetty piquantly. "But I'm not a proper Massachusetts old maid. I'm Vermont, and a swear-word or two don't scare me. I was brought up on first-hand stories of Ethan Allen's talk, and . . ." Marise broke in hastily, in mock alarm, "Now, Cousin Hetty, don't you start in on the story of Ethan Allen and the cowshed that was too short. I won't have our city visitors scandalized by our lack of . . ." Cousin Hetty's laughter cut her short, as merry and young a sound as the voice of the brook. "I hadn't thought of that story in years!" she said. She and Marise laughed together, looking at each other. But they said nothing else. "Aren't you going to _tell_ us?" asked Mr. Welles with a genuine aggrieved surprise which tickled Cousin Hetty into more laughter. "I shall not rest day or night, till I have found someone who knows that story," said Marsh, adding, "Old Mrs. Powers must know it. And _she_ will love to tell it to me. It is evidently the sort of story which is her great specialty." They all laughed, foolishly, light-heartedly. Marise consciously delighted in the laughter, in the silly, light tone of their talk, in the feeling of confidence and security which bathed her as warmly as the new wine of the spring sunshine. She thought passingly, swiftly, with her habitual, satiric wonder at her own fancifulness, of her earlier notions about steel blades and passes and parries, and being afraid to walk down the hall with her "opponent" back of her. Her opponent, this potent, significant personality, lounging on the bench beside her, resting in the interval of a life the intensity of which was out of her world altogether, the life, all power, of a modern rich man in great affairs; controlling vast forces, swaying and shaping the lives of thousands of weaker men as no potentate had ever done, living in the instants he allowed himself for personal life (she felt again the pang of her sympathy for his look of fierce, inexplicable pain) with a concentration in harmony with the great scale of his other activities. It was, just as the cheap novels called it, a sort, a bad, inhuman, colorful, fascinating sort of modern version of the superman's life, she reflected. She had been ridiculous to project her village insignificance into that large-scale landscape. A distant whistle blew a long, full note, filling the valley with its vibrations.