I decided to set my course this way, and I retraced my steps out of the woods so as to start off from the back piazza steps of the House and walk forward from that point. But as I emerged from out of the covering shade of the woods back into the bright morning, I heard someone call out, and, light-struck, I pulled at my hat brim to cast more shade and decipher the caller. In the fields, directly in the line of my own prospective path, stood Bart Hunnowell.

I held up my arm in what was, I hoped, an indeterminate gesture. I would not have turned aside his company, yet I had just formulated a plan for myself I rather determined to carry out alone. Bart stood still, awaiting my approach. I gave a shrug to the gods, then followed my own predisposed pathway, arriving at Bart Hunnowell’s shoes in the grasses.

“Where are you going, Miss Thomas?” Bart asked, shifting his stick to the other hand and reaching into his pocket for a neckerchief.

I raised my eyes to answer, half-wishing for him to tell me why it was Miss Grange had hold of me so. But his eyes were blue and clear and empty of an immortal prescience, and nodding toward the woods, he offered me his arm. Wordlessly, I took it, his silent companionship for the time being a soothing antidote to the chattering in my own hot and bothery nerves.

We entered the cool shade side by side, proceeding down the wide alleyway of the road to Middle Haven. Last autumn’s leaves lay golden over the green moss of summer, and the light wind brushing over recalled the turning tide. We walked in silence for a long spell, my hand still tucked beneath his arm, and as we walked through the deepening woods, I drifted into a drowsy kind of reverie, faintly aware that our steps had fallen in together, as below my thoughts, my feet kept their forward motion in time to his. The long road overhung by the spiraling trees appeared to call us farther and farther down into its dark green distance.