"I 'm afraid you are going too fast," she panted. He stopped himself and found her with cheeks flushed in her effort to keep up with him. "Pardon me," he exclaimed, "I did n't realize. I was going pretty fast. Let's sit down and rest a minute." "It is n't necessary if you will only slow down a little." "I will." He smiled. "My thoughts were going even faster than my legs. We 'll rest a little, anyhow." They seated themselves beneath a roadside pine which had sprinkled the ground with redolent brown needles. He wiped his hot forehead. The undulating green fields throbbed before his excited eyes, as in midsummer when they glimmer from the heat rays. He burrowed his tightened fists to the cooler soil below the brown carpet. "I guess you are glad to sit down a moment yourself," she suggested, noting his forced deep breathing. "Your efforts with Ben tired you more than you thought." "I 'd like to have that chance over again--now." His tense long body looked like Force incarnate. She caught her breath quickly. "I 'm glad you have n't," she gasped. She had the feeling that he could have picked up the boy and hurled him like a bit of wood into the road. She was not frightened. She liked to see him in such a mood. It gave her, somehow, a big sense of safety. It swept away all those haunting fears which had so long been always present in the background of her consciousness. It did this in as impersonal a way as the sun scatters shadows. "The trouble is," he was saying, "that we don't often get a chance to try things--the big things--twice. The fairer way would seem to be to allow this, for we have to fail once in order to learn." "You are generalizing?" she asked tentatively. "I am sentimentalizing," he answered abruptly, suddenly coming to himself. He was more personal than he had any right to be. It did no good to become maudlin over what was irrevocably decided. The Present. He must cling to that one idea. Let him drink in the sunshine while it lasted; let him absorb as much of her as he could without taking one tittle from her. His phrase had piqued her curiosity once more. She would like to know the inner meaning of his impatient eyes, the explanation of why his lips closed with such spasmodic firmness. There was something tantalizing in this reserve which he seemed to try so hard to maintain. She would like to deserve his confidences. He aroused her sympathy--a shy desire to be tender to him just because in his rugged strength there seemed to be nothing else but this for which he could need a woman. But as he glanced up she colored at the presumption of her thoughts. "I think," he said, "that if you are rested we had better start again." She rose at once and took her place by his side for the last stretch of free road that lay between her and the city.