Dick worked hard in term time, but all his long and short holidays he spent tramping Central Europe. This had been his guardian's request. "You will come back some day to your own land to work, Richard. My own judgment of you is that you will find your greatest interest in shaping whatever profession you choose to meet the new forms of social progress which each generation works out. I think this because you so love people. You'll never be content, as I have been, with books and solitude. I don't think you realize how full your life has been of human relations, or how you have depended on them, so I urge you to go among people in your holidays, common people, to be one of them; and do not hurry your return. You are young. Take time to find your place." Dick had faithfully followed this advice. He had spent six years in Europe without returning to the United States. He was thirty when he came back to take a church in a prosperous and highly energetic community. One year had been enough. They kept him busy from morning until night with their useful activities. To this he did not object; but while so active he had been chilled to the bone by his failure to get spiritual reactions from his parishioners. Moreover, he had been unable to establish anything like companionship, as he had known it, with any one in his church. He resigned, giving as his reason: "I am not earning your money. I don't know how." It was a sad blow to more than one member of St. Luke's, for while they were a little afraid of him (which, if Dick had known, would have made a difference), they were also enormously proud of him. His failure turned him to Great Rock, which he had never had the heart to visit since his guardian's death. There was a girl there he had always carried in a shadowy way in his heart, the only girl he ever saw in the dreams which sometimes disturbed him--a fair, frank, lovely thing, he remembered her to have been, Annie Dunne. For the first time in his life he wanted his mate. He couldn't face life again without one. He would go and find her. Why, why, he asked himself, had he not done this before? It was so clear that it was she that he needed. He did not ask himself if he loved her. He knew he did. As for Annie's loving him? Had he waited too long? Every mile of his journey westward was filled with recollections of their youth, the summer evenings on the veranda, the winter evenings by the fireside. And her letters, never many, but how dear and friendly and intimate they had been! He felt so sure of her, almost as if she were telling him, "I knew you would come." It was night when he reached Great Rock. He was always thankful that it was in the dark that he heard the words at her door, "Miss Annie? Miss Annie is dead. She was buried a week ago."