"My summer always has that effect," she went on. "Do you know that for
all I've been so much out of the active world"--a shadow fell on her
eyes,--"I long for country and farms? How I wish I could live always
out-of-doors! The day might come--" the shadow lifted a little--"when
I'd retire to a farm for good."

"You've one of those constitutions which require air and light and
sunshine," he answered.

"You're quite right. I actually bleach in the shadow--like lettuce.
That's why Aunt Paula always sends me away for a month every now and
then to the quietest place proper for a well-brought-up young person."

His eyes shadowed as though they had caught that blasting shade in
hers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her own
admission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was--"a spirit medium, or
something," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new philosophy,"
said Annette Markham.

Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held still
his basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for woman.
Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of affection,
proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the new thing,
greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him. He
even suspected, at such times, what might be the "something nobler than
nursing."

A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tennis
court. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down, back