"Do you see that tall pine outlined against the sky over there on Paradise Ridge, Woman?" asked Adam, with the Pan lights and laugh coming back into his farmer eyes and voice. "I have got to be there an hour before dawn, and it is fifteen good miles or more. I want to roll against a log somewhere and sleep a bit, and it is now after ten o'clock. Go get your bundle, and I'll hang it on my stick, and we will disappear into the forest forever. I know a hermit who'll put us in marriage bonds. Come!" As he held out his arms Adam began to chant the weird tune to that mate song of his own invention. "You know I can't do that," I said as I went into his embrace and drank the chant down into my heart. "There are so many live things that I must stay to watch over. I--I'm their--mother as well as--as yours. They must be fed." "God, there really is such a thing as a woman," said Adam as he hid his smouldering eyes against my lips. "You'll be waiting when I come back, and you'll go with me the minute I call, if it's day or night? You'll be ready with your bundle?" "You don't mean at daylight to-morrow, do you, Pan, dear?" I asked, with one of the last laughs that my heart was to know, for sometimes, it seemed forever, rippling out past his crimson crests. "No; listen to me, Woman," said Adam, as he held me tenderly on his right arm and took both my hands in his and held them pressed hard against my breast. "I am going away to-night, and I don't know when I can get back. I only knew to-day I'd have to go; that's why I--I took you and put my brand on your heart to-night. I can leave you aloose in the forest and know that I'll find you mine when I can come back. But, oh, come with me!" "I wouldn't be your earth woman, Adam, if I left all these helpless things. I'll wait for you, and no matter when you come I'll be ready. Only, only you'll never take me quite away from them all, will you?" "No; I'll build a nest over there in the big woods, and you can go back and forth between my--my brood and Mr. G. Bird's," promised Adam with Pan's fluty laugh. "Branded, and I don't even know the initials on the brand," I said to myself as I stood on the front steps under a honeysuckle vine that was twining with a musky rose in a death struggle as to the strength of their perfumes, and watched Adam go padding swiftly and silently away from me down the long avenue of elms. A mocking-bird in a tree over by the fence was pouring out showers of notes of liquid love, and ringdoves cooed and softly nestled up under the eaves above my head. "I'm a woman and I've found my mate. I am going to be part of it all," I said to myself as I sank to the step and began to brood with the night around me. I think that God gives it sometimes to a woman to have a night in which she sits alone brooding her love until somehow it waxes so strong and brave that it can face death by starvation and cold and betrayal and still live triumphant. It is so that He recreates His children.