wood, swung into step and chimed into the cantata of spring with
talk and laughter.

There had been rather a long silence.

Joan was sitting with her back against the trunk of a fallen tree,
with her hands clasped round her knees. She had tossed her hat
aside, and the sunlight made her thick brown hair gleam like copper.
They had come out at another aerie on the hill, from which a great
stretch of open country could be seen. Her eyes were turned as usual
in the direction of New York, but there was an expression of
contentment in them that would have startled all the old people and
things at home.

Martin Gray was lying full stretch on the turf with his elbows up
and his chin on his left fist. He had eyes for nothing but the vivid
girl whom he had found so unexpectedly and who was the most alive
thing that he had ever seen.

During this walk their chatter had been of everything under the sun
except themselves. Both were so frankly and unaffectedly glad to be
able to talk at all that they broke into each other's laughing and
childish comments on obvious things and forgot themselves in the
pleasure of meeting. But now the time had come for mutual
confidences, and both, in the inevitable young way, felt the desire
to paint the picture of their own particular grievance against life
which should make them out to be the two genuine martyrs of the
century. It was now a question of which of them got the first look-
in. The silence was deliberate and came out of the fine sense of
sportsmanship that belonged to each. Although bursting to pour out