"May I—may I keep this?" he asked, with flushing cheeks.
"Keep it—ay, eat it, if you like."
"Good-bye—and—and…." He pressed the girl's hand, as if unconscious of what he was doing.
The girl watched him as he hurried away.
"Queer lot," she murmured. "Something wrong somewhere…."
BY THE ROADSIDE
A man came walking down the sandy, grass-bordered road.
He walked mechanically, like a machine set to go, and going without consciousness or effort—without a question or a thought, without a glance to either side—on and on.
He reached the top of a rise from which the road sloped down to the valley. And here he stopped, as if set to go no farther.
Before him spread the landscape of the valley; green woods encircled it on every hand, like a protecting fence about a pleasure-garden. Within the area enclosed were mounds and hilly fields, stretches of meadow, farmsteads, rows of corn-sheaves and haystacks, patches of stubble, a tiny stream with a bridge and a fall, and mills on either bank.