He looked at her waving hair, luxuriant and glinting rich brown gleams in the sunlight; her thick, arched brows and hazel eyes, liquid and full of mystery as woodland pools; her skin, sun-browned and satiny, with abundant tides of life-blood coursing vigorously in its warm flush; her ripe lips. He studied her, and loved and yearned toward her; and in him the passion leaped up like living flames.

His mouth met hers again.

“My beloved!” breathed he.

Her rounded arm, bare to the shoulder, circled his neck; she hid her face in his breast.

“Not yet--not yet!” she whispered.

On the white and pink flowered bough above, the robin, unafraid, gushed into a very madness of golden song. And now the sun, higher risen, had struck the river into a broad sheet of spun metal, over which the swallows--even as in the olden days--darted and spiraled, with now and then a flick and dash of spray.

Far off, wool-white winding-sheets of mist were lifting, lagging along the purple hills, clothed with inviolate forest.

Again the man tried to raise her head, to burn his kisses on her mouth. But she, instilled with the eternal spirit of woman, denied him.

“No, not now--not yet!” she said; and in her eyes he read her meaning. “You must let me go now, Allan. There's so much to do; we've got to be practical, you know.”

“Practical! When I--I love--”

“Yes, I know, dear. But there's so much to be done first.” Her womanly homemaking instinct would not be gainsaid. “There's so much work! We've got the place to explore, and the house to put in order, and--oh, thousands of things! And we must be very sensible and very wise, you and I, boy. We're not children, you know. Now that we've lost our home in the Metropolitan Tower, everything's got to be done over again.”

“Except to learn to love you!” answered Stern, letting her go with reluctance.