while with her music."

They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the
house was perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape
of endless featureless wooded hills. "Think of sticking here
all the year round!" Lansing groaned.

"I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some
people!"

"Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the
Mortimer Hickses. But it was my only chance and what the deuce
is one to do?"

"I wish I knew!" she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and
he turned and looked at her.

"Knew what?"

"The answer to your question. What is one to do--when one sees
both sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it,
indeed?"

They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines,
but Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of
the brown lashes on her cheek.

"You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of
it?"