David rode directly to his log stable, put up his horse, then unslung his box and walked with it toward his cabin. Suddenly he stopped. From the thick shrubbery where he stood he could see in at the large window where his microscope was placed quite through his cabin into the light, white canvas room beyond. Before the fireplace, clearly relieved against the whiteness of the farther room, stood Cassandra, gazing intently at something she held in her hand. David recognized it as a small, framed picture of his mother--a delicately painted miniature. He kept it always on the shelf near which she was standing. He saw her reach up and replace it, then brush her hand quickly across her eyes, and knew she had been weeping. He was ashamed to stand there watching her, but he could not move. Always, it seemed to him, she was being presented to him thus strongly against a surrounding halo of light, revealing every gracious line of her figure and her sweet, clean profile. He turned his eyes away, but as quickly gazed again; she had disappeared. He waited, and again she passed between his eyes and the light, here and there, moving quietly about, seeing that all was in order, as her custom was when she knew him to be absent. He saw her brushing about the hearth, carefully wiping the dust from his disordered table, lifting the books, touching everything tenderly and lightly. His flute lay there. She took it in her hands and looked down at it solemnly, then slowly raised it to her lips. What? Was she going to try to play upon it? No, but she kissed it. Again and again she kissed the slender, magic wand, hurriedly, then laid it very gently down and with one backward glance walked swiftly out of the cabin and away from him, down the trail, with long, easy steps. Only once more she drew her hand across her eyes, and with head held high moved rapidly on. Never did she look to the right or the left or she must have seen him as he stood, scarcely breathing and hard beset to hold himself back and allow her to pass him thus. Now he knew that she had been deeply stirred by him, and the revelation fell upon his spirit, filling him with a joy more intense than anything he had ever felt or experienced before, so poignantly sweet that it hurt him. Had he indeed entered into her dreams and become an undercurrent in her life even as she had in his, and did her soul and body ache for him as his for her? Then he suffered remorse for what he had done. How long she had defended herself by that wall of impersonality with which she had surrounded herself! He had beaten down the ramparts and trampled in the garden of her soul. As he stood in the door of his cabin, the place seemed to breathe of her presence. She had made a veritable bower of it for his return. Every sweet thing she had gathered for him, as if, out of her love and her sorrow, she had meant to bring to him an especial blessing.