He had not seen a human being for the last three or four days. The hired woman, ashamed of her desertion, had offered to come back and help him, but he had refused; the doctor had made him promise to telephone if he needed anything; Hayes had wanted him to come and stay in his flat in town. Vance felt a great kindness toward them all—even toward the frightened hired woman he had no resentment. But what they could not any of them understand was how much he wanted to be alone… . He had broken into a laugh when, the day after the funeral, he had surprised Hayes and the doctor furtively hunting for his revolver when they thought he was out of sight… .

Now that the time to leave had come, he was sorry he had not decided to go on camping alone in the bungalow. It was a soft day at the end of March; the air was full of the smell of wet earth and new grass; and he sat on the porch and smoked his pipe, and thought of what that swampy wood of his would be in a week or two. He had grown into harmony with his solitary life; the thought of his book was reviving, the characters were emerging again, gathering about him unhindered, like friends banished by some intimate preoccupation and now stealing back to their familiar places… .

He was disturbed by the sound of a motor horn, and got to his feet impatiently. Whoever his visitors were, they were unwanted. He turned to slip out at the back of the house, and scramble over a fence into the wood lot. But the sound was not repeated—probably it came from a passing car on the turnpike. He sat down, leaning his head contentedly against the post of the porch, and gazing up at the pools of spring sky between the crooked arms of the apple tree. Lost in those ethereal depths, he was aware of nothing nearer earth till he heard his name; then he started up and saw Halo Tarrant a little way off, under the apple-tree. She looked very pale, but his eyes, full of the sunlit sky, seemed to see her through a mist of gold.

"Vance—I've found you!" She came toward him with her quick impetuous step, and as she drew near he saw that the radiance was not caused by the sun dazzle in his eyes but by some inner light in hers. He thought: "It's funny I was thinking about that wood—I'd like to show it to her… ." Then the reality of things rushed back on him, and he stood tongue-tied.

She glanced past him at the dilapidated bungalow. "This is where you've been living all these months?"

"All these months—yes."