"How charming!" he said; "as though one couldn't see enough country out of one's windows every minute in the year. But you can't tell where sentiment will crop up; some people don't object to chasing ants off the dishes and fishing sticks out of the milk. I do.... It's rather fortunate I found you alone: saves a frigid reception and cruel comments after I'm gone.... After I'm gone, Virginia." He seated himself where the sunlight fell agreeably and looked off over the valley. A shrunken river ran below--a mere thread of life through its own stony skeleton--a mockery of what it once had been before the white-hided things on two legs had cut the forests from the hills and killed its cool mossy sources in their channels. The crushers of pulp and the sawyers of logs had done their dirty work thoroughly; their acids and their sawdust poisoned and choked; their devastation turned the tree-clothed hill flanks to arid lumps of sand and rock. He said aloud, "to think of these trees being turned into newspapers!" He looked up at her whimsically. "The least I can do is to help grow them again. As a phosphate I might amount to something--if I'm carefully spaded in." And in a lower voice just escaping mockery: "How are you, Virginia?" "I am perfectly well." "Are you well enough to sit down and talk to me for half an hour?" She made no reply. "Don't be dignified; there is nothing more inartistic, except a woman who is trying to be brave on an inadequate income." She did not move or look at him. "Virginia--dear?" "What?" "Do you remember that day we met in the surf; and you said something insolent to me, and bent over, laying your palms flat on the water, looking at me over your shoulder?" "Yes." "You knew what you were doing?" "Yes." "This is part of the consequences. That's what life is, nothing but a game of consequences. I knew what I was doing; you admit you were responsible for yourself; and nothing but consequences have resulted ever since. Sit down and be reasonable and friendly; won't you?" "I cannot stay here." "Try," he said, smiling, and made room for her on the sun-crisped moss. A little later she seated herself with an absent-minded air and gazed out across the valley. A leaf or two, prematurely yellow, drifted from the birches. "It reminds me," he said thoughtfully, "of that exquisite poem on Autumn: "'The autumn leaves are falling, They're falling everywhere; They're falling in the atmosphere, They're falling in the air--' --and I don't remember any more, dear." "Did you wish to say anything to me besides nonsense?" she asked, flushing. "Did you expect anything else from me?" "I had no reason to." "Oh; I thought you might have been prepared for a little wickedness." She turned her eyes, more green than blue, on him. "I was not unprepared."