He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching for his coming. The day was still and warm for the end of April. Birds were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate. The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had hitched his goat. He drove by in style, lifted his chubby hand to his mother and shouted: “Dood-by, Doc-ter!” The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence. He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into deep lines of brooding. “Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?” he asked softly. “Just thinking----” “About a past that you should forget?” “Yes and no,” she answered thoughtfully. “I was just thinking in this flood of spring sunlight of the mystery of my love for such a man as the one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?” “You are sure that you loved him?” “Sure.” “How did you know?” “By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was drawn by a power that was resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon--until the shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve.” She paused and her lips trembled. “Oh, Doctor, what is love?” The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head at last and asked earnestly: “Shall I tell you the truth?” “Yes--your own particular brand, please--the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” “I'll try,” he began soberly. “If I were a poet, naturally I would use different language. As I'm only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may shock your ideals a little.” “No matter,” she interrupted. “They couldn't well get a harder jolt than they have had already.” He nodded and went on: “There are two elemental human forces that maintain life--hunger and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of these forces and there never will be--except in the imagination of sentimentalists. “Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the passion known as love cannot be experienced.