As they came out of the piñon grove, Honora discovered her babies. They were in white, fresh as lilies, or, perhaps, as little angels, well beloved of heavenly mothers; and they came running from the house, their golden hair shining like aureoles about their eager faces. Their sandaled feet hardly touched the ground, and, indeed, could they have been weighed at that moment, it surely had been found that they had become almost imponderable because of the ethereal lightness of their spirits. Their arms were outstretched; their eyes burning like the eyes of seraphs. "Stop!" cried Honora to Karl in a choking voice. He drew up his restless, home-bound horses, and she leaped to the ground. As she ran toward her little ones on swift feet, the two who watched her were convinced that she had regained her old-time vigor, and had acquired an eloquence of personality which never before had been hers. She gathered her treasures in her arms and walked with them to the house. Kate had not many minutes to wait in the living-room before Wander joined her. It was a long room, with triplicate, lofty windows facing the mountains which wheeled in majestic semicircle from north to west. At this hour the purple shadows were gathering on them, and great peace and beauty lay over the world. There was but one door to this room and Wander closed it. "I may as well know my fate now," he said. "I've waited for this from the moment I saw you last. Are you going to be my wife, Kate?" He stood facing her, breathing rather heavily, his face commanded to a tense repose. "My answer is 'no,'" cried Kate, holding out her hands to him. "I love you as my life, and my answer is 'no.'" He took the hands she had extended. "Kiss me!" He gathered her into his arms, and upon her welcoming lips he laid his own in such a kiss as a man places upon but one woman's lips. "Now, what is your answer?" he breathed after a time. "Tell me your answer now, you much-loved woman--tell it, beloved." She kissed his brow and his eyes; he felt her tears upon his cheeks. "You know all that I have thought and felt," she said; "you know--for I have written--what my life may be. Do you ask me to let it go and to live here in this solitude with you?" "Yes, by heaven," he said, his eyes blazing, "I ask it." Some influence had gone out from them which seemed to create a palpitant atmosphere of delight in which they stood. It was as if the spiritual essence of them, mingling, had formed the perfect fluid of the soul, in which it was a privilege to live and breathe and dream.