As he went through the hush of the evening to his rooms at the "Spotted Dog" the thought of Dorothea, of her house, her garden, her peaceful ordered life stirred him to a passion of appreciation. Out of the waste and desert of his own life, with its memories of the far country and the husks and the swine, he seemed to be looking through a window at the peaceful life--as a hungry, lonely tramp may limp to a lamp-lit window, and peering in, see father and mother and round-faced children, and the table spread whitely, and the good sure food that to these people is a calm certainty, like breathing or sleeping, not a joyous accident, or one of the great things that man was taught to pray for. The tramp turns away with a curse or a groan, according to his nature, and goes on his way cursing or groaning, or, if the pinch be fierce, he tries the back door or the unguarded window. With Robert the pang of longing was keen, and he was minded to try any door--not to beg for the broken meats of cousinly kindness, but to enter as master into that "better place" wherein Dorothea had found so little of Paradise. It was no matter of worldly gain. The Prodigal had not wasted his material substance on the cheap husks that cost so dear. He had money enough and to spare: it was in peace and the dignity of life that he now found himself to be bankrupt. As for Dorothea, when she brushed her long pale hair that night she found that her hands were not so steady as usual, and in the morning she was quite shocked to note that she had laid her hair-pins on the left-hand side of the pin-cushion instead of on the right, a thing she had not done for years. It was at the end of a week, a week of long sunny days and dewy dark evenings spent in the atmosphere that had enslaved him. Dinner was over. Robert had smoked his cigar among the garden's lengthening shadows. Now he and Dorothea were at the window watching the light of life die beautifully on the changing face of the sky. They had talked as this week had taught them to talk--with the intimacy of old friends and the mutual interest of new unexplored acquaintances. This is the talk that does not weary--the talk that can only be kept alive by the daring of revelation, and the stronger courage of unconquerable reserve. Now there came a silence--with it seemed to come the moment. Robert spoke-- "Dorothea," he said, and her mind pricked its ears suspiciously because he had not called her Dolly. "Well?" "I wonder if you understand what these days have been to me? I was so tired of the world and its follies--this is like some calm haven after a stormy sea." The words seemed strangely familiar. He had a grating sense of talking like a book, and something within him sneered at the scruple, and said that Dolly would not notice it. But she said: "I'm sure I've read something like that in a school reading book, but it's very touching, of course."