"The whole adventure?" The Youngish Man winced at the phrase, and then laughed to cover his seriousness. "All right," he acquiesced. "I'll show you just where the Runaway Road goes to." Without further explanation he stepped to the dooryard and scooped up two heaping handfuls of gravel from the Road. As he came back into the room he trailed a little line of earth across the floor to the foot of the stairs, and threw the remaining handful up the steps just as a heedless child might have done. "Go follow your Runaway Road," he smiled, "and see where it leads to, if you are so eager! I'm going down to the woods to see if my brother is quite lost in his clouds." Wasn't that _another_ dare? It seemed a craven thing to tease for a climax and then shirk it. She had never shirked anything yet that was right, no matter how unusual it was. She started for the stairs. One step, two steps, three steps, four steps--her riding-boots grated on the gravel. "Oh, you funny Runaway Road," she trembled, "where _do_ you go to?" At the top stairs a tiny waft of earth turned her definitely into the first doorway. She took one step across the threshold, and then stood stock-still and stared. It was a _woman's room_. And from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall flaunted an incongruous, moneyed effort to blot out all temperament and pang and trenchant life-history from one spot at least of the little old gray farmhouse. Bauble was there, and fashion and novelty, but the whole gay decoration looked and felt like the sumptuous dressing of a child whom one _hated_. With a gasp of surprise the Girl went over and looked at herself in the mirror. "Wouldn't I look queer in a room like this?" she whispered to herself. But she didn't look queer at all. She only felt queer, like a flatted note. Then she hurried right down the stairs again, and went out in the yard, and caught the White Pony, and climbed up into her saddle. The Youngish Man came running to say good-by. "Well?" he said. The Girl's eyes were steady as her hand. If her heart fluttered there was no sign of it. "Why, it was a _woman's_ room," she answered to his inflection. "Yes," said the Youngish Man quite simply. "It is my wife's room. My wife is in Europe getting her winter clothes. All people do not happen--to--like--the--same--things." The Girl put out her hand to him with bright-faced friendliness. "In Europe?" she repeated. "Indeed, I shall not be so local when I think of her. Wherever she is--all the time--I shall always think of your wife as being--most of anything else--_in luck_." She drew back her hand and chirruped to the White Pony, but the Youngish Man detained her. "Wait a second," he begged. "Here's a copy of Matthew Arnold for you to take home as a token, though there's only one thing in it for us, and you won't care for that until you are forty. You can play it's about the mountains that you pass going home. Here it is: