And indeed, Peter at forty-six had changed curiously little from the Peter of twenty-eight. Still slender and of an indolent grace, his aspect of youth had wonderfully persisted. And having passed his life far more in contemplation than in struggle, his face matched his figure with a freshness rare to middle years. He was, it must be admitted, a convincing argument in favor of laziness--except for the expression of his eyes; they had something of the look of Sheila's; their gaze seemed turned inward upon a tragedy of unfulfillment. And unfulfilled, in very truth, was all the promise of Peter's attainments; of his exceptional parts. He was still teaching rhetoric to little girls at the Shadyville Seminary, and, because he had not married, he was still leading cotillions. He read his Theocritus as of old; he called often upon Mrs. Caldwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila, such as this. So his years had passed; too smoothly to age him; too barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense. No one appeared to see his pathos, but pathos was there. He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had for each other. And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's understanding sympathy--for anything that she might choose to tell him. The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its crest just as the sun grew low and vivid. A glow was upon the autumn fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere; tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to them, a crooning indescribably mournful. And then they espied, crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature as weird and mournful as the sound. "Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila. Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged, unkempt being--yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags and her beggar's life by her insanity. Long ago she had ceased to work at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous effort, however simple. But she had resisted the obvious havens of asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the precarious charity of those who had once employed her. She made her home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to another in a sad progress of destitution. And whenever the days were fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them. To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed. For she held something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.