Indeed, even that Bluegrass world where she had spent a year was too narrow now for her vaulting ambition, and with that thought she looked down again on the little town, a lonely island in a sea of mountains and as far from the world for which she had been training herself as though it were in mid-ocean. Live down there? She shuddered at the thought and straightway was very miserable. The clear piping of a wood-thrush rose far away, a tear started between her half-closed lashes and she might have gone to weeping silently, had her ear not caught the sound of something moving below her. Some one was coming that way, so she brushed her eyes swiftly with her handkerchief and stood upright against the tree. And there again Hale found her, tense, upright, bareheaded again and her hands behind her; only her face was not uplifted and dreaming--it was turned toward him, unstartled and expectant. He stopped below her and leaned one shoulder against a tree. “I saw you pass the office,” he said, “and I thought I should find you here.” His eyes dropped to the scattered playhouse of long ago--and a faint smile that was full of submerged sadness passed over his face. It was his playhouse, after all, that she had kicked to pieces. But he did not mention it--nor her attitude--nor did he try, in any way, to arouse her memories of that other time at this same place. “I want to talk with you, June--and I want to talk now.” “Yes, Jack,” she said tremulously. For a moment he stood in silence, his face half-turned, his teeth hard on his indrawn lip--thinking. There was nothing of the mountaineer about him now. He was clean-shaven and dressed with care--June saw that--but he looked quite old, his face seemed harried with worries and ravaged by suffering, and June had suddenly to swallow a quick surging of pity for him. He spoke slowly and without looking at her: “June, if it hadn't been for me, you would be over in Lonesome Cove and happily married by this time, or at least contented with your life, for you wouldn't have known any other.” “I don't know, Jack.” “I took you out--and it rests with you whether I shall be sorry I did--sorry wholly on your account, I mean,” he added hastily. She knew what he meant and she said nothing--she only turned her head away slightly, with her eyes upturned a little toward the leaves that were shaking like her own heart. “I think I see it all very clearly,” he went on, in a low and perfectly even voice. “You can't be happy over there now--you can't be happy over here now. You've got other wishes, ambitions, dreams, now, and I want you to realize them, and I want to help you to realize them all I can--that's all.” “Jack!--” she helplessly, protestingly spoke his name in a whisper, but that was all she could do, and he went on: