“Ah, but he did not mean it.” She spoke as though Peter had been unkind, and had said that he would not love her. “But he did not mean it,” she repeated, tilting Peter's face up in her hollowed hand. “And love isn't cruel--he mustn't believe what Lorie says. Love is the flowers and the dusk falling, and the sound of birds and rivers, and the dearness of little children. Love is---- How shall I put it? Love is eyes in the head. Without love one can see nothing.” Peter gazed into her eyes. She was charming. He felt as though he had hurt her. And he felt that, if he had hurt her, he ought to go all across the world on his knees and hands till he obtained her forgiveness. He remembered afterward that, when her eyes were on his, he saw nothing but blue--just her eyes and nothing else. “He didn't mean it, did he?” she coaxed. In a very small voice he answered, “I did mean it. You see, there's Kay; I have to love her.” “But some man may love Kay presently--may take her away from you. What then?” Peter had never thought of that. He wouldn't think of it now, just as years later he refused to face up to it. “Kay would never allow anyone to take her. Would you, Kay?” Kay shook her head. “I only want Peter.” She freed herself from the golden woman and went and stood beside her brother with her arm about him--an arm so small that it wouldn't come all the way round. The man and woman stared at them. Here was something outside their experience. They had found hard knocks in the world and occasional stolen glimpses of tenderness--not a tenderness which one could carry about as a thing expected, could arrange life by, and refer to as to a timepiece in the pocket. Both were conscious of a hollowness in their living. And the woman--she had dreaded permanency in affection lest it should become a chain to gall her. A shadowy hurdler, very distant as yet, over trees and fields and hedges, evening came vaulting. No one could hear his footsteps, only the panting of his breath. He was racing from the great red door in the west, from which he had slipped out--racing, with his head turned across his shoulder, as though he feared to see a presence on the burning threshold and to hear a voice that would call him. The small applauding hands of leaves moved gently. The red door sank lower. Snared in the branches of the Haunted Wood, it came to rest.