They were silent a moment.
"I don't know how it is," she drew her hand across her eyes; "but you give me again the old feeling that you're somehow a prisoner—"
"A prisoner—yes."
"And that I must set you free."
His dark eyes were misty for a moment. "You couldn't do that without—"
"Without?"
He shook his head, turned, and glanced behind him. "Oh, look at the sun!"
It was going down in a crimson flood that dyed the whole country-side a red that was like new-spilt blood. It was one of those atmospheric effects under which the most contradictory colors in nature are subdued to a common hue. One has at such times a sense of looking at the landscape through colored glass. The white and yellow farm-houses flamed a dull orange. Their windows glowed like brass reflecting fire. The very trees and grass were soaked in the strong dye of the sun. Ethan's steady pull took them swiftly on, out of sight of farms, into the wilder country. Still the girl sat with uplifted face. Her love of autumn and of sunsetting had been no sad reflective sentiment, but something more than common—eager, subtly exhilarated, joyous. To-day, stimulated and at the same time balked, she found in the splendor of the hour a sharper sense than ever of the drama in life, the essential poetry in human experience.
"I think I must be growing old," she said, with a happy sigh.