"No, there is not one perfect one in all the thousands!" she uttered, with a low cry. "And they are all alike--all used and common. But this,"--she kissed him, drawing him closer to her beating heart. "This is you and all!" Thus she taught him the fire of love--so quickly, so surely! From the vague boyish beatitude had sprung this passion, like the opulent blossom out of the infolding bosom of the plant. Her kiss had dissipated his horrid suspicions. Her lips were bond and oath and sacrament. That night they escaped the world with its fierce cross-purposes, its checker-board scheme. The brutality of human success, the anguish of strife,--what is it when man is shut within the chamber of his joy! Outside the peaceful rain fell ceaselessly, quenching the flame and the smoke and the passion of the city. PART II CHAPTER I "Next week Monday is the tenth," Alves announced, glancing at the calendar that hung beside the writing-table. "Well?" Sommers answered. He was preparing to make the daily trip to the post-office on the other side of Perota Lake. "The Chicago schools open this year on the tenth," Alves continued slowly. "What difference does that make?" For reply Alves took from the drawer of the table the old leather purse that was their bank. The mute action made Sommers smile, but he opened the purse and counted the bills. Then he shoved them back into the purse, and replaced it in the drawer. "I don't know why I haven't heard about my horse," he mused. "That would only put the day off another month or two," Alves answered. "We have had our day of play--eight long good weeks. The golden-rod has been out for nearly a month, and the geese have started south. We saw a flock yesterday, you remember." "But you aren't going back to the school!" Sommers protested. "Not to the Everglade School." "I got the notices last week. They haven't discharged me! Why not?" she added sanely. "You know that it will be hard to build up a practice. And Miss M'Gann wrote me that we could get a good room at the Keystone. That won't be too far from the school." "I had thought of returning to Marion, where my father practised," Sommers suggested. "If we could only stay _here_, in this shanty three miles from a biscuit!" Alves smiled, and did not argue the point. They went to the shore where their little flat-bottomed boat was drawn up. Perota Lake, on which the tiny frame cottage stood, was a shallow, reedy pond, connecting by sluggish brooks with a number of other lakes. The shore on this side of the lake was a tangled thicket; the opposite shore rose in a gentle slope to fields of sun-dried grain. The landscape was rich, peaceful, uneventful, with wide spaces of sun and cloud and large broad Wisconsin fields. The fierce west wind came cool and damp from the water. Sommers pulled out of the reedy shore and headed for a neighboring lake. After rowing in silence for some time, he rested on his oars.