When Pete had done his office with the European gatherings of the party the ancient carriage looked like a van, and there was scant room inside for three passengers. "That means us for old Longfellow and the buggy," said Tom to Ardea. "Do you mind? Longfellow is fearfully and wonderfully slow, same as ever, but he's reasonably sure." "Any way," said Ardea; so he put her into the buggy and they drew in behind the carriage. Before they were half-way to the iron-works they had the pike to themselves, and Tom was not urging the leisurely horse. "My land! but it's good for tired eyes to have another sight of you!" he declared, applying the remedy till she laughed and blushed a little. Then: "It has been a full month of Sundays. Do you realize that?" "Since we saw each other? It has been much longer than that, hasn't it?" "Not so very much. I saw you in New York the day you sailed." "You did! Where was I?" "You had just come down in the elevator at the hotel with your grandfather and Miss Euphrasia." "And you wouldn't stop to speak to us? I think that was simply barbarous!" "Wasn't it?" he laughed. "But the time was horribly unpropitious." "Why?" He looked at her quizzically. "I'm wondering whether I'd better lie out of it; say I knew you were on your way to breakfast, and that I hoped to have a later opportunity, and all that. Shall I do it?" She did not reply at once. The undeceived inner self was telling her that here lay the parting of the ways; that on her answer would be built the structure, formal or confidential, of their future intercourse. Loyalty to the halo demanded self-restraint; but every other fiber of her was reaching out for a reestablishment of the old boy-and-girl openness of heart and mind. Her hesitation was only momentary. "You are just as rude and Gothic as you used to be, aren't you, Tom? Don't you know, I'm childishly glad of it; I was afraid you might be changed in that way, too,--and I don't want to find anything changed. You needn't be polite at the expense of truth--not with me." He looked at her with love in his eyes. "This time, you mean--or all the time." "All the time, if you like." "I do like; there has got to be some one person in this world to whom I can talk straight, Ardea." She laughed a little laugh of half-constraint. "You speak as if there had been a vacancy." "There has been--for just about three years. I remember you told me once that I'd find two kinds of friends: those who would refuse to believe anything bad of me, and those who would size me up and still stick to me. You are the only one of that second lot I have discovered thus far." "We are getting miles away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel," she reminded him. "No; we are just now approaching it from the proper direction. I had my war paint on that morning, and I wasn't fit to talk to you." "Business?" she queried. "Yes. Didn't the Major tell you about it?" "Not a word. I hope you didn't quarrel with him, too?"