Six weeks of all she had ever hoped for, dreamed of, in the lean years of heart starvation. The complete devotion of a strong man, a man who held a place in the world she knew. Every luxury wealth could purchase at her disposal, even to satiation. Her every whim ministered to, and even anticipated. This was something of the ripe fruit literally heaped into Elvine's lap. She had longed for it, schemed for it, and Providence had permitted all her efforts complete success. Now, with those six weeks behind her, she gazed upon the balance-sheet. She looked for the balance of happiness. To her horror it was blotted out, smudged out of all recognition. Oh, yes, the figures had been entered, but now they were completely obscured. It was the last stage of her journey to her new home. It was a journey being made in the saddle. Their baggage, a large number of trunks loaded with the precious gleanings from the great stores during the honeymoon, had been sent on ahead by wagon. There was nothing, so far as could be seen, to rob the home-coming of its proper sense of delight. Yet delight was more than far off. Elvine was a prey to a hopelessness which nothing seemed able to relieve. Summer was not yet over, although the signs of the coming fall were by no means lacking. The hard trail, like some carefully set out terra-cotta ribbon upon a field of tawny green, took them through a region of busy harvesting. The tractors and threshers were busily engaged in many directions. Great stacks of straw testified to the ample harvest in progress. Fall ploughing had already begun, and high-wheeled wagons bore their burden of produce toward the distant elevators. Then, too, human freight passed them, happy, smiling freight of old and young, whose sun-scorched faces reflected something of the joy of life and general prosperity prevailing. A radiant sun looked down upon the scenes through which they passed. It was the wonderful ripening God almost worshipped of these people who lived by the fruits of the earth. Jeffrey Masters understood it all, and reveled in the pleasant senses it stirred. For he, too, lived by the fruits of the earth, although his harvest was garnered in the flesh of creature kind. Elvine looked on with eyes that beheld but saw nothing of that which inspired her husband. Remembrance claimed her. Too well she remembered. And gladly would she have shut out such sights altogether, for more and more surely they crushed her already depressed spirits to a depth from which it seemed impossible to raise them. Nor was her beautiful face without some reflection of this. Her smile was ready for the man at her side. She laughed and talked in a manner so care-free that he could never have suspected. But in repose, when no eyes were upon her, a lurking, hunted dread peered furtively out of her dark eyes, and the fine-drawn lines gathered about her shapely lips, and seriously marred the serenity of their youthful contours.