I could carry her."

"I wouldn't try it if I were you"--he answered, with visible
impatience--"Off you go! Good-night!"

She gave him one lingering glance; then, turning abruptly picked up
her empty milk pail and started down the hill at a run.

The man she left gave a sigh, deep and long of intense relief.
Evening had fallen rapidly, and the purple darkness enveloped him in
its warm, dense gloom. He sat absorbed in thought, his eyes turned
towards the east, where the last stretches of the afternoon's great
cloud trailed filmy threads of woolly black through space. His
figure seemed gradually drawn within the coming night so as almost
to become part of it, and the stillness around him had a touch of
awe in its impalpable heaviness. One would have thought that in a
place of such utter loneliness, the natural human spirit of a man
would instinctively desire movement,--action of some sort, to shake
off the insidious depression which crept through the air like a
creeping shadow, but the solitary being, seated somewhat like an
Aryan idol, hands on knees and face bent forwards, had no
inclination to stir. His brain was busy; and half unconsciously his
thoughts spoke aloud in words--

"Have we come to the former old stopping place?" he said, as though
questioning some invisible companion; "Must we cry 'halt!' for the
thousand millionth time? Or can we go on? Dare we go on? If actually
we discover the secret--wrapped up like the minutest speck of a
kernel in the nut of an electron,--what then? Will it be well or
ill? Shall we find it worth while to live on here with nothing to