As I walked back to the village I mused on what Mary had said, but I felt no apprehension. Most lovers are alike in this--in youth, in middle age, in senility. Perhaps the advantage of middle life is that a man is more the master of himself, more in possession of the faculties necessary to carry him through a crisis. Without the impetuous desire of youth, or the deadened sensibilities of old age, he has a certain serene confidence that is a mixture of love and philosophy. It disturbed me somewhat to find with what equanimity I faced a situation which promised nothing. It really annoyed me to note that I was picking out mentally the place to which I should conduct Phyllis in order to have the harmonious environment adapted to a sentimental proposition. I remembered that down by the river, just beyond the willows, there was an old tree where Sylvia and I--ah, so many years ago!--had sat and talked of our lives before us. To that sacred spot I would lead Sylvia's daughter, and, passing gently from the past to the present, I would tell her of my love and of my fondest hopes. How dignified and appropriate such a spot for a frank, calm, and self-contained avowal! Thus philosophically and amiably plotting I walked contentedly along, and, looking up, I saw Phyllis coming toward me, swinging her hat in her hand, and suggesting in her girlish beauty and graceful outline the poet's shepherdess. She did not see me, and, yielding to a sudden impulse, I stepped quickly aside in the shadow of a neighbor's house, as she passed on with her eyes on the ground. I followed at a little distance, and discovered, much to my dismay, that she chose the road that led to the burying-ground. Now a cemetery is not at all the spot that a man, whatever his philosophy, would select for a tender declaration, but I was buoyed by the remembrance of Mary's words. "The finger of Providence may be in it," I muttered. "The Lord's will be done." Slowly up the winding path she walked, and I as slowly followed. When I reached her, she was standing at her mother's grave, just as she had stood the morning we first met. I tried to accept this as an omen, but failed miserably, and omens, after all, depend on the point of view. She raised her eyes, and, seeing me, blushed, another omen which means comparatively little to a man who is aware of the thousand emotions that are responsible for the blush of woman. I was again annoyed by the discovery that my pulses were not beating wildly, and that my heart was not throbbing tumultuously, and when I addressed a commonplace remark to her I was thoroughly ashamed and humiliated. It seemed like taking a mean advantage of innocence and inexperience.