Each hour stood out as bright with sunshine as a Sorolla. It was as though they had sprung to life at a call from her--had come to bring her ease. He talked at random of brooks that start nowhere and go nowhere, save over white stones and past watercress; of thin ribbed ferns and of scarlet bunchberries. He told her of a stream he knew, where, if you lie very quiet in the moss, you see speckled trout dart over white pebbles into the darker water beneath the lichened rocks. He told her of the shallows, and pools, and falls you find if you keep to its banks for the miles it sings by the grave trees. He told her of mountain tops where he had lain near the stars and watched the noon clouds sweep half a county with their big shadows. He told her of old wood roads he had followed through the young maples and birches and evergreens and pines--roads which lay silent all day long and all night long, month after month, ready for the feet which might tread it once in a year. So she took him back again to the redolent shadows, back to the silences where dreams are born. Here he came upon other things--the old path gay flowered with illusions which led him toward that future-- A future? What had he to do with a future? Was he rushing headlong thus soon into another pit as bad as that from which he had just escaped? The Future was Now--not one minute, not one second beyond. He was here before an open fire, with this girl in the background, with beautiful rugs and pictures about him, with a great seething, struggling, future-chained horde outside, and the eternal stars overhead. In the midst of it he was free, and this was enough for him to know. Now! Now! The girl was now and her eyes were now and the flush of her velvet cheek was now! CHAPTER VI _The Shadow on the Portraits_ He was roused by the sound of her voice and the single stroke of the clock back of her. It was one, and he could have sworn that they had been sitting here less than fifteen minutes. "I must go to Ben now," she said. "It is time to give him more medicine." "I will go with you." "No," she decided, "I think I had better go alone. A stranger might frighten him."