he had always possessed, but they had availed him little, as they have many another person, until good courage and high ideals had been added to them. He scarcely saw Sylvia for several days, and did not even realize it, they seemed so full and so delightful; then coming out of the house early one afternoon intending to go to the barn to do some little odd jobs of cleaning up, he met her, coming towards him on snowshoes, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes sparkling. She waved her hand and hurried towards him. "Oh, _Austin_! Are you awfully busy?" "No, not at all. Why?" "I've just been over to my house, for the first time--you know in the fall, I couldn't walk, and then I lost the key, and--well, one thing after another has kept me away--lately the deep snow. But these last few days I got to thinking about it--you've all been gone so much I've been alone, you see--so I decided to try getting there on snowshoes--just think of having a house that's so quiet that there isn't even a _road_ to it any more! It was quite a tramp, but I made it and went in, and, oh! it's so _wonderful_--so exactly like what I hoped it was going to be--that I hurried back to see if you wouldn't come and see it too, and let me tell you everything I'm planning to do to it?" She stopped, entirely out of breath. In a flash, Austin realized, first, that she had been lonely and neglected in the midst of the good times that all the others had been having; realized, too, that he had never before seen her so full of vitality and enthusiasm; and then, that, without being even conscious of it, she had come instinctively to him to share her new-found joy, while he had almost forgotten her in his. He was not sufficiently versed in the study of human nature to know that it has always been thus with men and women, since Eve tried to share her apple with Adam and only got blamed for her pains. Austin blamed himself, bitterly and resentfully, and decided afresh that he was the most utterly ungrateful and unworthy of men. His reflections made him slow in answering. "Don't you _want_ to come?" "Of course I want to come! I was just thinking--wait a second, I'll get my snowshoes." "I'm going to tear down a partition," she went on excitedly as they ploughed through the snow together, "and have one big living-room on the left of the front door; on the right of it a big bedroom--I've always _pined_ for a downstairs bedroom--I don't know why, but I never had one till I came to your house--with a bathroom and dressing-room behind it; the dining-room and kitchen will be in the ell. I'm sure I can make that unfinished attic into three more bedrooms, and another bathroom, but I want to see what you think. I'm going to have a great deep piazza all around it, and a flower-garden--and--"