In the low afternoon light we turned about and retraced our steps. There was but a fringe of pines along the southern wall, and as they were forty-year-old trees here the view both back to the house and over the wall into the next pasture was airy and open. Then the path led through a corner of the tamarack swamp where in wet weather I should have to put down some planks, and where the cattails grew breast high on either side. Then it entered the thick pine grove where a great many of the trees were evidently not more than fifteen or twenty years old and grew very close. The sunlight was shut out, save for daggers of blue between the trunks toward the west. The air seemed hushed, as if twilight were already brooding here. The little brook rippled softly. As we came to the first crossing, I pointed to the pool, already dark with shadow, and said, "It was wrong of me to play Actæon to your Diana, but I am not ashamed nor sorry. You were very charming in the dappled light, and you were doing a natural thing, and in among these little pines, perhaps, two friends may be two friends, though they are man and woman." She did not reply at once, but stood beside me looking at the dark pool and apparently listening to the whisper of the running water against the stepping-stones. Finally she said with a little laugh, "I have always thought that perhaps Diana was unduly severe. Come, we must be moving on." As the path swung out by the road, we heard a carriage, and stopped, keeping very still, to watch it drive past within twenty feet of us. The occupants were quite unaware of our existence behind the thin screen of roadside alders. "How exciting!" she half whispered when the carriage had gone by. Once more we entered the pines, following the new path over the brook again to the spot where we first had met. There I touched her hand. "Let us wait for the thrush here," I whispered. I could see her glimmering face lifted to mine. "Why here?" she asked. "Because it was here we first heard him." "Oh, forgive me," she answered. "I didn't realize! The path has made it look different, I guess. Forgive me." She spoke very low, and her voice was grieving. Did it mean so much to her? A sudden pang went through my heart--and then a sudden hot wave of joy--and then sudden doubts. I was silent. So was the thrush. Presently I touched her hand again, gently. "Come," said I, "we have scared him with our chopping. He will come back, though, and then we will walk down the clean path, making no noise, and hear him sing." "Nice path," she said, "to come out of your door, through your orchard, and wander up a path by a brook, through your own pines! Oh, fortunate mortal!" "And find Diana wading in a pool," I added. Again she shot an odd, questioning look at me, and shook her head. Then she ran into the south room and put the books back on the shelves. "Which one did you read, Marius or Alice?" I asked. "Neither," she smiled, as I locked the house behind us.