"Sir-r-r!" said Sarah Davidson, flushing red for the first time Wid Gardner had ever seen it occur, "such conver-r-r-sation is not welcome on your part, not in the least! I prefer-r-r that you shall not again mention that act which I have so long regretted. The past is past. A woman's real love is for to-day and to-morrow, when with her own eyes and her own hear-r-rt she has chosen honorably, sir-r--honor-r-ably! I bid you good evening, Mr. Gar-r-r-dner. I request you never to speak of that incident again!" Nor did he, so far as known. But when Wid himself, chuckling innocently, had passed on down toward the gate with the loaf of bread which Annie was sending over to Mary Gage for her evening meal, Sarah Davidson was passing up the road toward the school house--entirely forgetting to turn to the left toward Nels Jensen's, where she boarded. She was wiping away large, ponderous tears--tears of joy that the world had in it love of men and women--that God, after all, did know--that the world still was as it was in the beginning, incapable of destruction even by war, incapable of diversion from the plan of peace and hope. She guessed so much--and guessed the future of Mary Gage's life--from data meager enough, but which may have served. What she saw on the single, unsigned page, and what opened all the fountains of emotion in her own really gentle soul, was a part of what Mary once had heard come to her in a world of darkness. The words now were written by herself in a world of light. She had promised him when he went away that, if ever everything was clear in her own mind regarding what was past, she might write to him one day. So now she had written: "Only thoughts of you remain In my heart where they have lain; Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining, A hid sweetness, in my brain. Others leave me; all things leave me: You remain."