locust blooms. Constellation by constellation the stars glimmered into
being. Hannah, Lucy! They mingled and in his fiber were forever one. He
gave himself up to the beauty of his passion, purified and intense from
long patience and wanting, amazed at the miracle that had brought back
everything infinitely desirable.

He forgot his age, and, preparing for the night, saw with a sense of
personal outrage his seamed countenance reflected in the mirror of the
bureau. Yet in reality he wasn't old--forty-something--still, not
fifty. He was as hard and nearly as springy as a hickory sapling. There
was a saying in which he found vast comfort--the prime, the very prime
of life.

VIII

His enormous difficulty would be to bring Lucy to the understanding of
his new--but it was the old--attitude toward her. If she had never
become completely familiar to him association had made him a solid
recognized part of her existence; if not exactly a father, an uncle at
the very least. Calvin realized that she would be profoundly shocked by
any abrupt revelation of his feeling. Yet he was for the time in no
hurry to bring about the desired change in their relationship. His life
had been so long empty that it was enough to dwell on the great
happiness of his repossession.

This, he knew, could not continue, but at present, today, it was almost
enough. Before he was aware, the summer had gone, the mountains were
sheeted in gold; and he was still dreaming, putting off the actuality
before them.