"Dark day, isn't it?" Blair said; but his voice broke in his throat. "I think we are going to have rain," Elizabeth answered, mechanically. She was perfectly unaware of what she said, for at that moment she saw, on the other side of the street, the friendly postman who two hours ago had brought her David Richie's insult; now, his empty pouch over his shoulder, he was trudging back to the post-office. Against the clamoring fury of her thoughts and the instant vision of David's letter, Blair's presence was no more to her than the brush of a wing across the surface of a torrent. As for Blair, he was dazed, and then ecstatic. She had not sent him away! She was perfectly matter-of-fact! "'_I think we are going to have rain_.'" She must have forgiven him! "May I walk home with you, Elizabeth?" he said breathlessly. "I'm not going home. I am--just walking." "So am I," he said. He had got himself in hand by this time; every faculty was alert; he had his chance to ask for pardon! "Come out to Mrs. Todd's, and have some pink ice-cream. Elizabeth, do you remember the paper roses on those dreadful marble-topped tables that were sort of semi-transparent?" Elizabeth half smiled. "I had forgotten them; how horrid they were!" With the surface of her mind she was conscious that his presence was a relief; it was like a veil between her and the flames. Blair, watching her furtively, said: "I'll treat. Come along, let's have a spree!" "You always did do the treating," she said absently. Blair laughed. The primitive emotions are always naked; but how inevitably most of us try to cover them with the fig-leaf of trivial speech--a laugh, perhaps, or a question about the weather; somehow, in some way, the nakedness must be covered! So now, Love and Hate, walking side by side in Mercer's murky noon, were for the moment hidden from each other. Blair laughed, and said he would make her "treat" for a change, and she replied that she couldn't afford it. At the toll-house he urged again, with gay obstinacy. "Oh, come in! You needn't eat the stuff, but just for the fun of the thing; Mrs. Todd will be charmed to see us, I'm sure." "Well," Elizabeth agreed; for a moment the vapid talk was like balm laid upon burnt flesh. Then suddenly she remembered how David had sprung up that snowy path to the toll-house, to knock on the window and cry, "I've got her!" Ah, he was a little too sure; a _little_ too sure! She was not so easy to get as all that, not so cheap as he seemed to think--though she had offered herself; had even told him she was "tired of waiting"! (And at home Cherry-pie was counting the teaspoons for the wedding breakfast.) Blair heard that fierce intake of her breath, and quivered without knowing why. "Yes, let us go!" Elizabeth said fiercely. At least this chuckling old woman should see that David had not "got her"; she should see her with Blair, and know that there were men in the world who cared for her, if David Richie did not.