The Way to Peace

by Margaret Deland




TO LORIN DELAND

KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE AUGUST 12TH, 1910




I

ATHALIA HALL stopped to get her breath and look back over the road
climbing steeply up from the covered bridge. It was a little after five,
and the delicate air of dawn was full of wood and pasture scents--
the sweetness of bay and the freshness of dew-drenched leaves.
In the valley night still hung like gauze under the trees, but the top
of the hill was glittering with sunshine.

"Why, we've hardly come halfway!" she said.

Her husband, plodding along behind her, nodded ruefully.
"Hardly," he said.

In her slim prettiness Athalia Hall looked like a girl, but she
was thirty-four. Part of the girlishness lay in the smoothness