garden next door.

At the big front gate he paused again and turned lingeringly as one
reluctant to go. The old home in the twilight seemed so lonely, so
deserted by all to whom it had been most kind.

At last, with a movement suggestive of a determination that could not
have belonged to his boyhood, he set his face toward the world. Down
the little hill in the dusk of the evening he went, walking quickly;
past the house where the little girl had lived; across the creek at
the foot of the hill; and on up the easy rise beyond. And, as he went,
there was on his face the look of a man. There was in his eyes a new
light--the light of a man's dream. Nor did he once look back.

To-morrow he would leave the friends of his boyhood; he would leave
the scenes of his Yesterdays; he would go to work out his dreams--even
as in his Yesterdays, he would play them out--for the works of men are
as the plays of children but dreams in action, after all.

Would he, _could_ he, play out his manhood dreams alone?

And the woman also, for the first time, was face to face with Life
and, for the first time, knew that she was a woman.

For a long while she had seen her womanhood approaching. Little by
little, as her skirts had been lengthened, as her dolls had been put
away, as her hair had been put up, she had seen her womanhood drawing
near. But she had always said to herself: "when I do not play with
dolls, when I can dress like mother, and fix my hair like mother, I
will be a woman." She did not know, then, that womanhood is a matter