He left her to thank her kind fortune she had had sense enough to faint and bruise herself slightly. Why, oh, why, had she never thought of doing so beforehand? She was humming as she waited for her maid to come and get a steamer trunk.... Miss Clergy watched from the corner of the doorway unawares. But what she thought she kept to herself. * * * * * Blessed Memory, buried in the wildest part of Maine, with the nearest post office entirely unpronounceable, proved to be an advance sample of paradise. Being perfect there was nothing complex about it—and very little to tell concerning it. Time flew, the hours tumbling over themselves like babies at play. It was exactly like the thirsty traveller coming upon the ice-cold mountain spring and drinking his fill with no comment but the satisfied and grateful, “A-a-h, man alive!” So it was with Thurley. It seemed that Hobart had come into the wilderness prepared to prove that he could make it habitable, as he told her. After he had built a shack, found his food and water, lived by himself for weeks at a time to experiment with bark, twigs and logs—learning the call of wood beasties and forgetting the cries of men—he permitted himself a few extravagances in the way of tools and furnishings until Blessed Memory, as he called the small, silvery shingled house set in a sand dune like a great moonstone in palest gold, came to be a reputable habitation where he took refuge each year, “living,” he said, in order that he might “exist the rest of the time.” Miss Clergy was ill at ease in her nunlike bedroom without ornament and scant of furnishings. But she found thought for reflection in watching Thurley and Bliss as they went off to try for fresh fish. Her queer, bright eyes would blink rapidly as if a succession of unpleasing thoughts had attacked her conscience and she refused to give way to them. When they would return and hallo for her to answer, she would usually take refuge in the plea of eternal neuralgia and leave them to their own ways for the remainder of the day! The rooms contained old-style braided rugs and a spinning wheel which, to Hobart’s delight, Thurley knew how to use, thanks to Betsey Pilrig, old blue china and pewter, a square piano on which Hobart played jingling tunes while Thurley sang them as gloriously as when she played missionary with Philena. The beds were mahogany, so was the fire settle, and there was an outdoor Dutch oven which her host insisted on using, a pump and a well and a tiny barn where his wheezy little automobile rested when it was not chasing up and down country roads in search of supplies. He had no real neighbors nor did he wish for them. He had bought enough acres on all sides of Blessed Memory to secure him freedom from molestation. He wanted to feel, so he explained, that even lavender and black velvety butterflies, great, golden bees and humming-birds might come and go at will.